Portugal Lisbon Mission: Porto, Portugal, Foz do Douro Week 3

February 23, 2015

Well it has been another great week. I am in love with our cute little area. This week contacting was a little rough. The holiday Carnival was going on. It is like the Brazilian Mardi Gras equivalent that made its way to Portugal. It goes on for like 3 days and so nobody was on the street for these three days. If they were on the street they were always in a hurry trying to get to a party and they did not want to talk to us. Also, nobody wanted to have lessons in their houses either! It was also raining most of the week. So, it was difficult. I actually like it when it rains because it's less cold when it rains. When its not raining its colder haha. Today it warmed up a bit so hopefully spring is on the way! At night the temperature just drops and it gets so, so cold. We put on so many layers. I always look so funny at night.

Ill give you an update on Antonio and family. We had a super CRAZY lesson with them this past week. Wow! We came over and Antonio wasn't there. One of his teenage tons, Pedro Cristiano was there. He let us in and we talked to him a little bit. His mom, Maria, was there too. She has some sort of mental illness. She never talks or really moves but she always just looks at us and smiles. All of the teenage boys take really good care of her. They need to know and believe that they can be sealed together! I Can't wait to teach them more. Anyway, we were teaching them and then Antonio and Bemvindo (the one we first contacted on the street) came in. So we talked to them. AND THEN Bemvindo´s girlfriend, Victoria came in. And she told us that she was baptized in our church when she was 14! But she got pregnant after that and felt embarrassed so never came back to church. She was like helping us teach the lesson and knew tons of doctrine. So we had Bemvindo, Pedro Cristiano, and one older son in the other room listening, Victoria, Antonio and Maria all in the room with us just talking. They kept bringing up different things and asking so many questions. It was crazy. They said they all wanted to go to church and we were so excited but.. they didn't come. Not even Antonio! We´ll try for next week. They have so many kids its unheard of here. They have a little boy and little girl too. I really hope we can teach them more. What are the odds that Bemvindo´s girlfriend was already baptized? Wow. Its just crazy. Antonio says that he does not want to change his church but he will come visit our church to see what its like. Bemvindo says that he wants to change his life and be better but doesn't go to church. Pedro Cristiano says that it's good to believe in God but that he doesn't want a religion. The kids were all baptized in the Catholic church but never practiced. We´ll see what happens! After that crazy lesson me and Sister Stocks just kept commenting on how socially exhausted we were haha. It was an introverts nightmare! Pray for us to be able to talk under pressure because for sure its going to happen again this week! I was feeling sick that day too so that was interesting.

Well, that's pretty much all I have for you this week! We are working on finding new people to teach who give us real addresses and real phone numbers instead of fake ones. We walk around so much and I just can't get over this stupid cold. I hope it goes away soon! But we are super happy. I love our little apartment. Now that I have deep cleaned most of it, it's just so adorable. Its the perfect little home for two Sisters. :) It has everything! Except a microwave haha. We always cook real recipes for all our meals and so I have been learning how to cook here its great. Everyone can send me letters directly to the house. I love getting letters!

Love you all!

Love,
Sister Anderson

Enjoying a chocolate filled croissant in ´´the secret garden´´ today.

There are always seagulls everywhere because we are a little city on the coast!! :)

A delicious little cheese meat roll from our pastry shop. It reminded me of that bacon pizza that we all like from Gepetto's Pizza Shop (Village Haus Restaurant) in Disneyland.

I love these trees.

The secret garden that we found contacting the other day.

The secret garden.

P-day selfie this morning!

Our bathroom and it's almost cleaned. I need to scrub some more of the gross tiles.

We bought the cute rug this week.

Pasta that we made! It was the recipe mom sent. It was super good.

One of the packages!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They both came the same day at different times. One had Portugal Post Office tape so they opened it and went through it for some reason but didn't charge me anything for either!