From Portugal With Love: August 19, 2013

We had a very interesting week. We started by making lots of contacts with our PEF participants and doing 4 different apartment inspections. Most of the missionaries had their apartments looking pretty nice, but we felt that one apartment could have used a little more care. We have one more inspection to make this week in Seixal.

The weather turned a little warmer again, and then cooled off some. This week is supposed to be in the mid to high nineties, so we may be looking for the shade and any cooling breezes. Last night was pretty comfortable, but there was lots of noise and later fireworks, so it took me a while to get to sleep.

Thursday was a holiday here, with our office closed, so we left for Porto and other cities in the north. After a drive of one hour, we arrived at Santarem and met Elder and Sister Rose, who traveled with us to Coimbra, a university town, and then on to Porto. We went to our hotel and then drove over to Ana and Reginaldo Cruz’s home. We worked with Reginaldo in our office until he was transferred with a better position in the late fall of last year. He and Ana are in their thirties and just the nicest people. Since their children were visiting grandparents, they called us their children for the weekend. They even offered that we stay with them and sleep in their children’s beds, but we thought it would be better to stay in a hotel. They live in Gaia, which is across the river from Porto.

Ana was willing to feed us all of our meals, but we ate out a few times and bought their lunch and dinner. She did fix us three lovely meals, though, and we were especially grateful that they fed us on Sunday so we didn’t have to stop and buy food on the Sabbath. They have a darling place that they are renting and we felt really comfortable with them. What a delightful and fun couple!

We were able to visit some very interesting places in Porto, Guimarães, Braga, and Gaia. We saw several old churches, a castle, a museum, several of our churches, and we loved seeing their bridges. One night we actually walked across the Dom Luis Bridge on top (it was cold and windy up there) to go have dinner near the Douro River and then returned later on the bottom level. It is a gorgeous area that gives you an old-world feel. It was fun to walk around the area and see all the restaurants and narrow rock streets and tall buildings. There were lots of people, but we did find a nice restaurant where we had the entire bottom floor to ourselves. Many of the people eat outside, but this time it was a little chilly and we decided to eat inside.

We attended Reginaldo and Ana’s ward on Sunday and really enjoyed it. It felt the most like a home ward of any we have visited thus far. Sister Rose said that it made her a little homesick. They still have almost 11 months to go on their mission.