From Portugal With Love

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.)