Another Week on the Island

Olá,

Wednesday we went to Porto Judeu on a bus, another city to pass a member family. Turns out we took the wrong bus than went down to the city instead of to the top, haha. We had an hour walk up the mountain on a little dark road with cows on both sides and eventually got there.

I made a list of the Former Investigators by areas in the city. It's super useful to have. We have been doing a lot of area book cleaning and organizing too.

I found a bunch of my mission President's weekly letters over the past few months so I have been reading, studying and in my´study journal writing a few of the principles that he wrote then below the promise that he gives us when we do these things. It´s been great and I am excited to study more this week!

Lucia came to church and loved it, after we passed by taught the Word of Wisdom and made a baptismal calendar for her, she has been reading a lot in the Book of Mormon and has a testimony of it. She said, "I have been smoking and drinking coffee for 10 years, but I will stop both this week because I want to be ready for baptism. She showed us a Jehovah Witness´s Bible that she had been reading for a while, but we explained that it wasn´t really the bible, the scriptures were changed so much that it wasn't accepted to be the Bible so it just says, Sacred Scriptures. Then we read a few scriptures from Elder Noad´s Bible and looked to her JW bible and those verses were not there. She then told her son to put it in the trash haha

Sunday night we were about to go back to the church to have a little Sacrament meeting for a member who can't make it in the mornings because of work. I said let's just knock this door, teach whoever is in there and then go to the chapel. We knocked, Grace opened the door, we entered and taught her the Restoration and left a Book of Mormon, then returned to the chapel.

Até Proximo.

Elder Anderson

(No pictures this week, but there should be lots next week hopefully!)

Semana de Milagres

Olá,

This was the best working week I had had on my mission. We finished with 14 lessons, 10 new investigators and 4 marked for baptism. It was incredible, the mission fast is bringing miracles.

The zone leaders flew in Monday night and stayed Tuesday for district meeting and divisions, Elder Zacheu followed a prompting and found Natalia who is elect and who we are now teaching.

The Praia branch is temporarily closed so the Angra area covers the whole island. Thursday we took a bus to the area, and began working, without any appointments we followed the spirit and taught 3 lessons and found 2 new investigators.

I gave a talk in church about supporting the leaders of the church, did my first baptismal interview and played 4 hymns in sacrament meeting.

For P-day we went bowling, played 2 games, the second game I beat my old record of 100 and got 136!

We had a lot of cool findings this week and I had a few opportunities to testify of the blessings that the gospel brings in families and that it will bring in the families of our investigators.

A few years ago on a rainy day a woman named Lusia left a grocery store and found a Book or Mormon laying on the ground getting rained on, she picked it up, looked around for someone that dropped it and ended up taking it home and started to read it. A few years later, this week, two missionaries felt inspired to knock on her door. We made an appointment for Sunday, taught the Restoration, at the end of the lesson she said, "Now this all makes sense. I know this is true and I want to be baptized!" It was an incredible experience.

Tchau.

Elder Anderson

  Lunch in Praia

 Angra

I met a professional basketball player who is from Lexington Kentucky

 Defrosting and organizing

I am "A" it was the best bowling game of my life!

Açores!!

Olá,

This week has been a whirlwind it started going to Lisbon on Tuesday and spending a few days at the mission office studying, playing piano and doing contacts because out flight didn't leave until Thursday. It was super cool because we had a devotional with Stephen W. Owen the young men's general president and Devin Durrant from the Sunday school board. It was awesome. The Durrants talked about teaching in the Saviors way with inspired questions and invited us to study how the Savior used questions to teach in the 4 gospels and 3 Nephi. Stephen Owen, who spoke at general conference, talked about the Doctrine of Christ and becoming converted to Him and how the mission is the time our our life to become converted to him and grow and change to become more like Him. I asked the Durrants what scripture they were each ponderizing this week then they asked mine i didn't have one but said that i would start so i choose Ether 12:4 to ponderize.

Thursday morning we went to the airport and when we got to our gate we looked over and saw The Durrants again, they were flying to Spain or France for more conferences it was cool to see and talk to them. Then I got on a plane heading directly for home got about halfway then stopped on an island to preach the gospel for a few months haha. The accent is different here its pretty funny sometimes. Casa is pronounced Caaaasa, they hold the second to last vowel really long haha.

4 Elders one Island. Terceira is incredible i have never seen anything like it and it is the first true island that i have ever been on. I have seen so little of the island but i have been totally amazed. There is one branch on the island in the city of Angra that is pretty strong, the biggest i have yet been in and has roughly 60 active members. And no one plays the piano so i will be able to play in sacrament meeting again! I played 4 hymns yesterday and it was super fun. I am glad for the opportunity i have had to get better at the piano.

The mission started another fast for 40 days we had ours on Thursday. That the night the Assistants and other Zone leaders were calling us and thanking us for our sacrifice, because they saw many miracles.

There are a good bit of tourists here i will start carrying a Book of Mormon because of all the English speaking Americans. We found a couple from South Carolina two times it was funny because they are super strong and prideful about being Catholic and tried to destroy our testimonies saying that the Catholic church is the same church that Jesus established and that Joseph Smith is a false prophet and this and this it was a little ridiculous. There are a lot of people like that that talk bad about the church without knowing much about it, they confirm the truth even more and the prophesy from Moroni when he said the name of Joseph Smith would be known for good and bad around the whole earth.

The people here are super cool i like them a lot a lot more chill and there are almost no Brazilians or Africans. Our miracle this week was Sunday night when our appointments had fallen through but we were super determined to teach a lesson before the week ended, so we decided to pass Dina one more time she said that she didn't have much time but we said that we would just explain the Book of Mormon for her in 10 minutes. She is awesome and was super anxious to read and pray about it. Her face just beamed and we explained and testified.

Até proximo,

Elder Anderson

 

 Bye Bye Portugal

 Landing on Terceira

 Landing!

 Our Casa

 This place is simple incredible I feel so fortunate to be here

Send forth the Elders of my church unto the...

Ola,

Our last week in Vasco da Gama, Cidade da Montijo was great and full or trials of faith, we worked hard and the results came differently than we expected. 

At district meeting we talked about the power of the Book of Mormon and how it is the keystone of our religion, and how we should use it as our doctrinal focus in lessons. In studies this week I found scriptures in the Book of Mormon and now I can teach the restoration and plan of salvation with just the Book of Mormon! 

Halloween was great we were doing some searching and knocking a lot of doors, we weren’t having much success until we changed our strategy: "We are the Elders and we have a book that will change your life", not interested... we would say "Doce ou Atravasouri" (or Trick or Treat), then their reaction would change and they we go get some candy to give to us and we would try to explain a gospel principle while they gave us the candy, haha. We thought it was hilarious the first time it happened and we ended up getting more candy than we could eat. 

We ran into a lot of members, less actives and other people that we already knew on street corners or walking different ways than usually it was pretty cool. My 5k is now 22:46! 

A few weeks ago we talked with George a few days later he ran out of a bar with a Sagres in his hand calling our names then introduced us to his family.  One day this week, we walked a different way and ran into him at work and invited him to the Halloween party, which he came to and won the game and a bunch of candy but left before they announced it. The next day we left a lesson with Laura and he was going from one work to the other and we talked to him and told him that he won, we then passed his house that night gave him the candy and a Book of Mormon.

We didn’t baptize this transfer but the first week we found a less active who was going through a really hard time in her life, we were able to help her out, she came to church the past 4 weeks and the members helped her move houses to a better situation and now she is happy and has returned to activity in the church!

D&C 133:8 “Send forth the elders of my church unto the nations which are afar off; unto the islands of the sea...” that’s right last night we received a call that we will be whitewashed and I will go to Angra on the island of Terceira!! Apparently it is the European Hawaii and they have a weird French accent haha it will be an adventure!

Até próximo.

Elder Anderson

 Saying bye to the members, The Saints are strong here!

Pizza at Colombo we were stuffed

November 9th we woke up to this email from Dallin:

Hey!

I am at the airport in Lisbon I will leave at 9H30 Lisbon time to the terceira island, I will probably get there when you all wake up in Georgia, Love y'all!

Elder Anderson

And we were thrilled to get this email and picture from Elder Devin Durrant's wife that same morning:

We met your sons yesterday at the mission conference and saw them again today at the airport.  Enjoy the photo.  Julie Durrant

Here are some pictures of the island Dallin was transferred to (and this is right where he is living, in this town...):