Elder Dallin Anderson's Mission Blog: 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!