From Portugal With Love: June 9, 2013

A year ago today we were in the Oakland Temple with all of our children and their spouses for the marriage of Jared and Lisa. What a wonderful day it was for us to be with them in this sacred house of the Lord on this special occasion. We wish Jared and Lisa a very happy first anniversary today.

We had a good week making contacts with our PEF participants. At times we have requests to be their friends on Facebook. This is great because then we can put a face to the people we correspond with or talk to on the phone. I am even starting to recognize some of them by their loan numbers.

We went out for ice cream on Wednesday evening with Paco and Susi who brought two young interns from Spain to spend some time in Portugal giving training on the new employment program of the Church. They are students from BYU. After visiting with them, we discovered that one of them served in Rio and knows Nicole Prins, who was a sister missionary with us in Chapeco. The other young man served in Porto Alegre with her brother.

We had a wonderful day yesterday! Three senior couples met at President and Sister Fluckiger’s and traveled to Sintra to enjoy some of the great scenery and palaces there. The Roses and Fluckigers went to the Pena Palace and National Palace (which we had already seen) and we went with the Johnsons to the Quinta de Regaleira Palace and grounds, which we found absolutely wonderful. I took lots of photos, so will post a bunch on Facebook and just a few here. We met later for lunch together at a nice restaurant. We continue to be amazed at the history and the many wonderful places for a tourist to visit in Portugal. I had never imagined it to be so interesting.

Today after our Church meetings we had the baptisms of three young ladies. Two are the daughters of Paula, who was baptized two weeks ago and the third is a good friend and neighbor. I took Chocolate Crinkles because the girls had really enjoyed them at Paula’s baptism. We gave Zumera a ride to her work after she had attended Church and the baptism of her daughter. Paula was called as a ward missionary today.

Tomorrow is a holiday here and we won’t be going to the office, as it will be closed. We will probably need to catch up on our cleaning and find something else to do. Maybe we should prepare our talks for later this month. My subject is “Families can be Forever” And Elder Henry’s is “Come to the Temple”. Let us all work together to have our families with us for eternity is our prayer. MUCH LOVE TO ALL!