From Portugal With Love: 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.