Monday, December 26, 2016

2-5-8-0

Olá

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! We had a pretty warm one here, it was around 70's throughout the day and felt great. It was so fun to Skype with the family and see how everyone was doing, that had to have been the fastest hour of my life!

Weeks in the mission go by so fast it is crazy! On Wednesday we went to tons of stores looking for a present for the gift Exchange for the Christmas party after a while we went to this cool craft and sculpture store. I bought this African carved mask haha it was super cool. On Thursday we had the mission Christmas party. We left at 6 in the morning, drove about 2 hours to Lisbon and didn't get back until 10:30. It was fun to see the whole mission and my District from the MTC. I saw this guy that looked familiar so I talked to him and he was my good friend, Ben, now Elder Fogg from EFY 2 years ago haha it was crazy. I couldn't believe that we were both called to the same mission!

One night we were tracting in Baho de Torres and we came to this building that had a keypad. I pressed 2-5-8-0 and it unlocked the door haha it was so funny and we found some great people in there that we will hopefully begin teaching.

The Santo André área covers 18 cities that are spread out pretty good. It would take about 2 hours to drive from the bottom to the top haha Obviously we could not work effectively it all 18 so we focus mainly in Sines, where we live, and Santo Andre, where the church building is, and we have done some work in Santiago and Melides. They are all cool areas. It is so fun driving out to Melides and seeing the countryside and all of the rolling hills and trees.

Tuesday night we had an appointment with José Maria. We were about to knock on the door, but I just felt like sitting down. So we sat down for a few minutes and then we saw him walking up the stairs. We then met with him and had a great lesson, definitely the best that we have had with him so far. He finally decided that he would pray about the Book of Mormon and ask God if it was true! My thought to sit down for a few minutes was not me wanting to be lazy, but a prompting from the Spirit. If we had not sat down for a few minutes we would have knocked on the door then left and would have missed him. It was crazy. Elder Bednar said something like, "whether we know it or not we will be guided by the Spirit" That is so true as I have had and acted on so many promptings that have turned into miracles.

I gave a talk in church yesterday. I read the story of Jesus´s birth in Luke 2, then lots of scriptures that testified of  Christ. It was pretty simple but it went well. Have a great week!

 A rock from the sea of Galilee

 Passion fruit
 My friend Elder Ben Fogg from Efy 2 years ago

 Christmas Day
 Bolo Rei (Kings Cake)
 Cut my own hair today
 Frisbee at the beach!

Monday, December 19, 2016

Merry Christmas!

Feliz Natal,

Things have been going great here in Portugal, Sines is all decked out in Christmas decorations and all the stores are playing Christmas music. What a wonderful time it is to be a missionary!

Our car got checked last Monday and they said that nothing was wrong and it has not had any problems since!.

We had a zone meeting in Setubal this week, it was great. We learned a lot about the importance of teaching people and not lessons. I picked up my Christmas package there and noticed a soft/dark corner so I opened it up and the tobasco sauce bottle had broken along with the lid of the Anderson's Syrup. The tobasco sauce fortunately soaked into the box it was wrapped in and the corner of the package and didnt get on anything else. The Syrup's lid cracked and the seal came off (they had to have thrown the package). About 1/5 of it leaked out, it got on a few things but nothing was ruined except for the tobasco sauce, What a miracle! I set up my presents around Elder Salmon's little Christmas tree and am looking forward to opening them on Christmas morning!

The weather has been pretty good overall despite some cold mornings and evenings. There was some crazy wind here all throughout Friday, some of the strongest I have ever been in!

Friday we had just got back from St. André and were about to walk to an appointment. I was just going to bring my triple, I like to bring as few things as possible, but I had a prompting to bring a Book of Mormon also. After acting on another prompting we met this guy named José Manuel. He somewhat believes in the Bible and loves to read. He got excited when we told him about the Book of Mormon, another Testament of Jesus Christ in the Américas. He graciously accepted it and was anxious to begin reading. Milagre!

Our Branch Chistmas was party on Saturday, it went great and we had a ton of good food. 24 people came to it! Sunday we had the primary program and had 27 people at church, it felt so big haha

We were planning on going to eat at a Brazilian buffet for our Christmas Eve dinner until we found out that it had closed, then yesterday President Enaceo's family invited us over for a Christmas Eve dinner!

Merry Christmas to you all and remember the reason for the season!



 Pancakes & Anderson´s Syrup e muito Bom!



 This boat is crazy big!
 Someone wrote this on the beach hahaha
Between the library and the art center
graffiti 

Monday, December 12, 2016

The CODE 68 Miracle

Hey Everyone!

This week has been the craziest of my mission so far, but it has been great. Portuguese is coming slowly, I am working hard but it is a little discouraging having been here for over a month and still being lost in the language and don't understand much haha but I hope to make a lot of progress this transfer.

We did a display table this week with a lot of church materials, Books of Mormon, vídeos, pamphlets, pass along cards, etc. We put it on a corner that a good bit of people walk by. We did it for about an hour. It went pretty well, we made a ton of contacts and found some great people to begin teaching! It definitely brought me out of my comfort zone haha

Friday was a wild day for a few reasons. First of all I did 500 push-ups throughout the day, 20 sets of 25 in my exercise time, meals and when Elder Salmon was busy with other things. It was crazy hard but felt great. I have been doing push-ups almost everyday for the past 4 weeks, It feels great! Friday Afternoon we we leaving the apartment and had just closed the door when we realized we had forgotten the keys. We went ahead and went out to our appointments and when we came back for lunch we tried to break in haha We tried to slide a bendy card through to unlock for about 30 minutes and it wasn't working, so our neighbor called the locksmith to come help us get in. It was going to be 58 Euros and we would have to use personal money to pay. The locksmith was busy somewhere else so we continued trying to break in. After 30 more minutes with our neighbor´s help wiggling the door while trying to shove the card in between to unlock it we finally unlocked it! We were so relieved! I did not want to pay that money haha

Friday evening we were on our way back to Sines from Santo Andre, about a 20K drive. We were almost halfway back and were driving 130k/h, about the speed limit, and were passing a car when the steering locked. Elder Salmon was switching lanes and kind of jerked over. I was like "what are you doing??" and he said "I can´t turn!" so I told him to stop immediately on the side of the road. The dashboard said, "CODE 68" We got out and looked at the car, nothing seemed to be wrong, we turned it off and on a few times and it was still locked, it felt like the power steering pump had gone out. We stood on the side of the road for about 30 minutes and called the Mission office. I was a little worried because the closest missionaries are an hour and a half away and the only active members that had a car to help us live over an hour away. We prayed and decided to try to make it back to Sines, Elder Salmon could turn the wheel with a lot of force, so we slowly and carefully began our journey back. We were going to stop at this car place, but it was closed so we just pulled into a gas station. We walked into ask for help and these 3 older guys were standing around a table. They had seen Elders before and began to ask us questions about what we do. After a little while they said they wanted to hear a message so we went back to the car and got 2 Book of Mormons and the Restoration Pamphlet. We basically taught the Restoration in the middle of this gas station to the 3 men and the cashier who was interested and listened in between helping customers. We gave a Book of Mormon to João and the cashier lady and marked an appointment for the next evening. We then remembered that we had come their to fix the car. We asked the lady at the cashier and she told us that João was a mechanic. He came and looked at the car and said that everything looked fine. We started it up and the steering worked perfectly. It was crazy! It worked fine on Saturday but we did have a few problems with it on Sunday and will have it checked out today. But nevertheless if we didn't have the CODE 68 problem we probably never would have ran into them. Our appointment with João fell through because of a miscommunication but we miraculously ran into him and set up an appointment for Sunday night. We taught him the rest of the Restoration, he told us that he doesn't know hardly anything about God or religion but that he wants to know what God wants him to do and he wants to hear more of our message. It was such a miracle!

Sunday during sacrament meeting we heard a loud noise upstairs, the chapel is in the basement, Our church building is at the bottom of a big apartment complex with stores and restaurants on the bottom levels.  It was like someone was breaking through a glass window or something, . President Inácio told us Elders to go check it out. I was preparing for the worst when I looked out the window by the stairs and saw a guy getting cases of beer out of a storage room right next to the church, hahaha we were relieved along with the congregation haha it was funny.

We met with José Maria again this week. He realizes the more that he reads the Book of Mormon that it fits perfectly along with the Bible. The two books literally fit seamlessly together!

We knocked on a door and met a man named Bruno and asked if he had a few minuted to hear our message, he said that he had about 10 minutes. I was shocked haha he was the first person that has said that since I have been here. We taught him the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and left him a Book of Mormon! He said that he feels that our message is true and wants to learn more!

Last night we were walking by a park and I saw a guy sitting on a bench listening to music. I had a prompting to talk to him so I did, his name was Daniel, I taught him about the Book of Mormon and gave him one! He was sincerely interested. It was awesome!

Until next week,

Elder Anderson








Monday, December 5, 2016

Transfers

Olá

This past Tuesday we left at 6 in the morning to drive to Zone training in Setubal. We taught 5 30-minute lessons to missionary investigators. President Tavares really wants us to improve on our teaching so we practice a ton. After we went on splits in Setubal, it was a cool area. I went with Elder Badger he is a super good missionary and literally talked to everyone, he was a great example for me.

Friday we helped Tatiana with her job, she cleans the floors at a sports place. It was big and a lot of sweeping and vacuuming, but it was fun. It took about 3 hours.

I street contacted a Austrian couple who didn't speak Portuguese so I spoke to them in English. For the first time it was hard for me to speak English, I had to think through my words and accidentally said a few Portuguese words haha

Sunday we had a 2.5 hour bus ride to Almada for Stake conference, I was feeling pretty good about my Portuguese up until then haha I understood some words but had a hard time connecting them. Elder Salmon translated some of it for me and it was really good, they talked a ton about member missionary work.

We only had 3 lessons this week, 2 with José Maria, he is progressing pretty well and enjoys meeting with us!

Sunday night we were walking around town and stopped to talk to this guy sitting on a bench smoking named Antonio. We asked if we could share a 5 minute message with him and he willingly accepted! That is pretty rare. We talked to him about the Restoration and gave him a The Book of Mormon to read and set up an appointment for later this week, Milagre!

I began my study of the Atonement of Jesus Christ this morning, all the missionaries in the mission are supposed to do a indepth study of it throughout their mission. It is going to be so interesting!

I can´t believe I have already been in the field for a transfer! Time has flown by, Elder Salmon and I are both staying in Santo André. We have a lot more work to do here, I am excited!