Feliz Pascoa from Portugal

Happy Easter to everyone!  We are so grateful for our wonderful Savior, who gave His life in our behalf and was resurrected, so that we will all be resurrected after we leave this mortal life.  How we love and worship Him and strive to follow His example in our daily lives.

We had a great week.  On Monday we left the office a little early to have our teeth cleaned.  It is much more reasonable here, but they wanted to do $1300 worth of work on our teeth.  I think the cheap cleaning is just a way to get you into their office so they can find all kinds of work you need done.  Needless to say, we did not succumb to their wishes.

We were invited to Bishop Ribeiro’s home, along with Elders Staples and Oliveira, on Monday night for a nice dinner, visiting and a video on the Savior.  They have an adorable family with a 2-1/2-year-old son who never stops moving and two daughters who are 8 and 12.  We really enjoyed our evening.  On Friday night we invited our two young Elders to eat with us at our apartment.  Elder Staples expects to be transferred this week; we will see what happens.

Gavin turned 14 this week and Jared is now 25 years old.  We hope that they both had great birthdays.

Miguel Adriano’s son returned from his mission to Orlando, Florida, on Thursday.  We arranged to be in the Miratejo Ward today so that we could hear his talk.  When Bishop Santos heard that we were coming, he decided that Elder Henry should also speak.  We heard from Miguel’s wife that he was going to be a speaker long before he was asked by Luiz Silva, who works in our office.  Both Elder Adriano and Elder Henry gave wonderful talks, along with Miguel.  The funny thing that happened is that we arrived at 9:30 (even with setting our clocks ahead one hour) and waited for the combined RS/Priesthood meeting to begin for about 30 minutes.  When it finally started and the Almada Ward Bishop started to give the lesson, I turned to Mike and said, “Do you think maybe the wards traded time slots at the beginning of the year?”  We hurried out just in time for the Miratejo Ward Sacrament Meeting to begin.  I was thinking that I didn’t recognize very many of the ward members, but we had heard that there have been lots of baptisms since we started attending the Caparica Ward.

We were invited to eat Easter dinner this afternoon with Elder and Sister Johnson and President and Sister Fluckiger.  It is always enjoyable to get together with the couples in our mission.  Today has been very windy and stormy, so we got pretty drenched in our comings and goings.

We are planning an outing with Paula Castro (our Brazilian friend) on Tuesday to show her around Lisbon, so we are hoping for a nice day.  Actually yesterday was quite beautiful, so we should have done it then.  We did go to Costa de Caparica to check on some new missionary housing.  It looks like we may have two sets of Elders there soon.

We are well and continue to enjoy our opportunity to serve here in Portugal.  We send our love to all

We walked by this park on Saturday.

We ate at this little Mexican restaurant in Caparica on Saturday.

Old Convent in Capuchos

A view of Costa de Caparica from overlook.  (Ocean in background.)

Greetings from Portugal dear friends and family.  Yesterday we celebrated from afar the birthdays of three of our precious grandchildren—Kade-11 years old, Lauren-8 years old, and Braden-6 years old.  It was also the wedding anniversary of my brother Ken and his lovely wife, Alice.  We are so happy to have all of these loved ones in our lives. This is a big month for birthdays in our family.  Marissa, Dale, Gavin and Jared also have birthdays this month.   It is so much fun to hear of the activities of our children, grandchildren and friends.  We like being involved in your lives, even if it is from far away at this point, and we love you all very much.

On this mission we have been able to meet and associate with quite a few wonderful missionary couples.  On Friday the Eyres were visiting from their mission in Frankfurt, Germany.  They are from Wyoming and their calling is with the auditing program of the Church and they were here to do some training.  It was fun to visit with them in our office.  They have a granddaughter who will be coming to our mission in the fall.

Elder Staples had a colonoscopy on Friday to find the cause of his problems.  The doctor was concerned that he might have Chrone’s Disease.  But, luckily, he only has an infection.  After taking his medicine for a few days he seems to be doing much better.  We picked him and Elder Oliveira up from the hospital in Lisbon on Friday afternoon, took them to get his medicine at the pharmacy, bought them some food (as Elder Staples hadn’t eaten for two days and was starving), and took them home.  We love these young Elders who serve the Lord so well.

On Saturday we had a stake Relief Society birthday celebration at the Miratejo chapel.  We had several excellent speakers and an exhibition and sampling of cakes decorated by various women in the stake.  It was an enjoyable event.  I will include some pictures of the cakes.  It was stressed in our meeting how important women are in the affairs of the Church, in expressing our opinions, supporting the priesthood, serving one another and doing our part to further the work of the Lord.  I am also happy to have a husband who supports me and does all he can to make me happy.  I feel so blessed.  The women at our office are always commenting about how he opens the door for me and pulls out my chair, etc. 

Now this is Elder Henry, because I knew that Sister Henry wouldn’t say anything about the wonderful talk she gave this morning in Sacrament meeting.  She spoke about testimony and its relationship to conversion.  She had prepared well and talked for about 15 minutes in perfect Portuguese with her usual great spirit.  We usually have a reverence problem with our kids and youth in our sacrament meeting, but during her talk everyone was paying attention.  She was able to communicate the great importance of building continually on our testimony by positive actions.  She did superbly. 

     After she finished, the bishop remarked that, Sister Henry had used “perfect Portuguese.” She doesn’t like to admit it, but she does do very well.  She had written the talk all by herself and delivered it smoothly and without flaws.  You should all be proud of the way she has learned the language.  She doesn’t get a lot of opportunity in our calling this time to speak, but she writes enough that she does very well with the language.  We need to find ways to speak more in Portuguese so that she would have more confidence in speaking extemporaneously.  I am so fortunate to have such a wonderful companion who is a great example for me and such a strength to our companionship.  I love her and love serving with her.  Everyone else loves her too.

We are glad that Jared and Lisa were able to travel to Bowling Green to be there for Lauren’s Baptism.(It’s a nine hour trip.) We appreciate them representing the rest of the family and our love for Lauren and her family.  Thanks Jared and Lisa.  Have a safe trip back to Bentonville. We will pray for you.

Congratulations to all the birthday grandchildren!   

Cakes for RS Celebration

More cakes.  (Not all are shown.)

Olinda (from our office) and her daughter, Nadia. (They made the blue and yellow cake in the photo above.)

March 17, 2013

We had a nice week here in Portugal.  Of course, it’s always a nice week when you are serving the Lord.  We passed the half-way mark of our mission and the time is going rapidly.  Today in Sunday School our teacher, who is a wonderful young lady from Brazil, played a DVD about missionary work .  It caused me to reflect on the missions our sons served, along with all of the young men and women who serve the Lord on missions.  I relived the emotions of sending a son out on a mission and the joy in having him return home after having served an honorable mission.  Also it reminded me of how difficult it was to leave our beloved friends in Brazil when we returned home from our mission almost four years ago.  I started thinking about leaving the friends we have made in Portugal and I shed a few tears.  It’s amazing how you can feel so much love for the people you meet on a mission.

The people here in Portugal have been a little more reserved at showing friendship, but they are wonderful nonetheless.  We try to smile and speak to people on the street; some are very nice and respond, but from others we sometimes get only a scowl.  Yesterday when we parked our car and got out there was an 83-year-old lady who was having trouble walking and stopped to rest.  I took a minute to speak to her and she commented that I must not be from Portugal because the people here aren’t that nice. 

Our internet went down at the office on Friday, so we left for a while and did the shopping that we had planned to do after our work was completed.  We went back later in the afternoon when we found out it was finally available.  It’s amazing how much we rely on the internet to accomplish our work.  It certainly makes it easier to keep in touch with all of our wonderful friends and family, for which we are very grateful.

We had an outing yesterday with Elder and Sister Johnson.  We drove to Cascais and visited Boca do Inferno and did some shopping at the booths which they have nearby.  It reminded me of the time we were in Ensinada, Mexico, because the merchants were all coaxing us to look at their goods and trying to get our business.  We were able to bargain with them a little and buy a few souvenirs to take home.  Because of rain, we didn’t get out of the car very much, but did stop at the Tower of Belem and also found a tiny little restaurant and had a wonderful meal of grilled salmon.

Elder Staples is still having a few health problems, so we have been keeping pretty close contact with him.  We will be sad when he is transferred, as we always are after serving with these wonderful young missionaries.  Some you get more attached to than others; he and Elder Oliveira are some of those.

I need to get down to business and prepare my talk for next Sunday.  We have come to expect a talk assignment every three months.  Because the ward is small, we all get lots of opportunities to participate.

I liked the message of our Relief Society and Priesthood lesson today.  In Matthew 5:48 we are commanded to be perfect, even as our Father in Heaven is perfect.  But we should not expect to be perfect all at once (or even anytime in this life).  If this is what we expect, we will be disappointed.  We can be a little better today than we were yesterday, and better tomorrow than we are today.  We just need to do our best. 

At Boca do Inferno

At Boca do Inferno

Merchant Booths near Boca do Inferno 

Tower of Belem

March 10, 2013

WET and windy describes this past week.  We have had rain every day and it looks like we will continue to have rain until about Wednesday of this week.  At times it is sunny and dry; but we have had some rain every day and heavy rain at times.  I am looking forward to more sunshine.  The clouds today were magnificent, and I will include some pictures.

We started on our contacts for the month and were able to help the young elders with their languages.  We were scheduled to help again later in the week, but they had some important visits scheduled, so we didn’t go the second time.  Elder Staples is sick and he and Elder Oliveira were not able to come to Church today to see their Domingas confirmed.  In fact, Mike may take him to the hospital later today if we can figure out where he should go and what procedure to follow.  We’re not sure yet.  (We just found out that the office elders took Elder Staples to the hospital.)

Mike gave a wonderful talk in Sacrament Meeting today.  He related the story of the first members of our Church in Brazil and their conversion stories.  It fit right in with the topic he was given of Conversion to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  It is quite an interesting story and I always enjoy hearing it, even though I have heard it many times.  The father of this family moved them to Brazil to get away from the Church, but the wife was persistent and strong in her testimony.   Eventually she died and the husband, after many years, had such poor health that he spent much time seated and reading.  The daughter who cared for him placed a Book of Mormon near his chair and when no one was around, he would read.  Eventually he had a desire to be baptized and his life of smoking, drinking and wanting nothing to do with the Church were behind him.  The final years of his life were much happier for him after his conversion.  I have been assigned to speak in two weeks on Testimony of the Gospel.

We were invited to Bruno and Tina Silva’s on Friday night for dinner.  They have a 12-year-old daughter, Sueli.  Bruno is a Church employee in our office and Tina is the president of an international institute in Mount de Caparica.  We really enjoyed our meal and our visit with them.  We have noted that all of the Portuguese people who have invited us to dinner start with a soup.

We feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be here in Portugal on our mission.  We encourage any who have ever considered a mission to submit their papers and have the experience of a lifetime.  We send our love to all!

A view from our apartment.

Tina, Sueli and Bruno Silva who invited us to dinner.

Fabulous clouds!

Park across from our apartment.

March 3, 2013

It was another good month for us with the Perpetual Education Fund.  We were able to contact 100 percent of our high-priority contacts and all but a very few of the other participants.  (We have almost 400 total.)  I was able to locate half a dozen of them on facebook, so I sent them a message that way.

Sister Fluckiger asked if we would be willing to check about 6 missionary apartments every quarter for cleanliness, safety, etc.  This will give us even more opportunity to interact with the young missionaries, which we really enjoy.

We also met twice with Elder Staples and Elder Oliveira to help them with their languages.  Elder Henry is helping Elder Staples with Portuguese and I am helping Elder Oliveira with English, or at least I hope I am helping.  I took warm cinnamon rolls and then found that Elder Staples was fasting.  But, I am sure that he ate them later.

I got a new permanent on Friday afternoon.  Sonia, my hairdresser, is making me crazy.  She is always running late.  I waited an hour and 15 minutes before she started on me.  I would be tempted to go elsewhere if I had an idea where to go.  When we go in the morning, she is late coming to work, and when we go in the afternoon, she is way behind from starting late.  It’s a no-win situation.

Saturday we had an enjoyable time meeting our new missionary couple from Southern California—Elder and Sister Sommers.  Sister Fluckiger invited all of the couples in our mission to a luncheon to meet them.  We had soups, salad, bread and flan and apple crisp.  It was very nice.  We really enjoy our association with the other couples.  Elder and Sister Rose stopped by our office on Friday and we had a  nice visit with them.  They were here to do some baptism interviews, one of which was for a sister who was baptized today in Costa de Caparica.   Domingas Da Veiga was baptized by Elder Oliveira in a meeting held immediately following Sacrament Meeting.

We start our meetings here with Relief Society and Priesthood Meetings.  Today the R.S. presidency was all late arriving, so when they came in Annica (a fairly new convert who was called to serve in the R.S. presidency) went to the front of the room and began giving her very first lesson.  She gave a beautiful lesson.  We hadn’t had a welcome, opening hymn or prayer.  I didn’t want to embarrass her, as she is very new in the Church.  After, when the presidency realized that no one had been there with authority to begin the meeting, they asked me if I would see that the meeting was started in the future if none of them were there.  It is a little bit like we found in Brazil—the people trickle in little by little during the meeting. 

I’m so grateful for our Savior, who loves each of us more than we can imagine.  How thankful I am for the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and my understanding of the Plan of Salvation.  We are so blessed.  Our love to each of you.

The Sommers (our new couple) with Pres. and Sister Fluckiger

A highly-decorated Smart Car

Elder Oliveira, Domingas Da Veiga and Elder Staples

Note the ornamental wrought iron.  Much of it seen here.  (Lisbon)