From Portugal With Love: May 5 - Happy Mothers Day in Portugal

At the beginning of the week we finished off our PEF contacts for the month and were able to get 100 percent of the high-priority contacts made. It seems that we get better results when we are able to make a voice contact by phone, but we do get some nice responses from emails and texts also.

We had another Portuguese holiday on Wednesday, May 1^st—It was their Labor Day. Since our office was closed that day, we decided to take a drive and see some new sights. We had a most wonderful day traveling south through many small towns, viewing two castles, and lots of blooming wildflowers. We didn’t have an exact destination, but just decided as we went along. It was very enjoyable.

Our Stake Conference was this weekend. Our visitor was Elder Reina, an Area Seventy from Spain. He spoke in English and had a wonderful translator who repeated his words in Portuguese. He is a large man, very delightful and funny. He said that he encountered the missionaries at age 20 when he was playing his guitar in the park with friends and he had very long hair and a beard. We especially enjoyed the Saturday meetings. The choir was very good both days and all the current missionaries were invited onstage to sing the final song with the choir—“Called to Serve”. We didn’t know about it beforehand. We were able to speak with former missionaries from Gregg’s and Jared’s missions at the conference. There is a young man from Seixal who is very talented musically (piano and voice) who was a runner-up on their version of American Idol. He has received a mission call to the Sao Paulo South Mission and spoke this morning in the conference. He will be performing, along with others, in a musical program in Setubal on the 18^th. It should be really good!

This week we have scheduled apartment checks with six different sets of missionaries. This will be our first time to do these inspections here. We had this assignment for a time at home and enjoyed it. I guess I will be making lots of cookies this week. We gave the Seixal Elders a ride home from conference today so we would know how to find them later this week.

We feel so blessed to be here in Portugal at this time in our lives. We send our love to all.