Hand of the Lord is guiding us

''Portugal is just old people with old stuff living in old buildings.'' -Unknown

 

This week was good. We had a lot of work that we did, and we did it. It was great seeing the hand of the Lord as he has guided us here in Portugal. 

 

The importance of Members: We have been working a lot with the members recently. I was reading in Preach My Gospel this week during personal study and I read the following sentence. I think that I may have been eating cereal while I was reading. In Preach My Gospel it says ''more people are baptized and remain active in the church''. I choked on my corn flakes and chocolocos. This part really hit me. Our purpose as missionaries is to ''teach repentance and baptize converts'' and I thought to myself as I was cleaning up the corn flakes that had spilled on my desk that that would probably be the best way to fulfill that purpose. 

Here in Europe the area presidency has made a card that has three basic goals that members should do to grow in the gospel. They are

3. Find an ancestor,

2. Become Self-Sufficient temporally and spiritually and

1. Bring a Friend to Church.

As missionaries we can help a ton with bringing friends to church. We decided to bring the card with us to the members and make goals to help the members bring their friends to church. It has helped the members grow in the testimony and feel more of the spirit. Also it has helped us eat more in their houses, so it's really a win win for all. 

 

Augusto: He was baptized. He didn't smoke at all since the day he left it behind. The only trial of his faith was the baptismal suit that we had in the church. All the others were being washed because of the last baptism that happened so we only had one left that was in his size, the only problem was that it was all ripped and the zipper was broken. We had to run home and back to the church to get white pants and a shirt that he could wear. Augusto being a very large man and most of the missionaries being very skinny and scrawny the shirts they had didn't work very well. I had a shirt that fit him which goes to show where my body size is at. It is going to take a long time to get back in shape after the mission. 

Pics from Portugal

rock n roll n righteousness

This week was a crazy one. As a mission, we have been focused on being more consistent with the level of our work. It is really easy because we have transfers every 6 weeks to work really hard to find people the first weeks of the transfer and the last half to stop finding people because they won't get baptized when you're there. But we are trying to change that so that we work hard always and always have people that we can always help to be baptized.

This week, we had a workshop with the leaders of our mission for our zone. They basically helped us make plans for how we could do the work with the most efficacy possible and be more consistent. A lot of revelation was received and as always when revelation is received, we have a couple of ways that we can react. We can say our leaders don't know what's going on or the situation and we can ignore and not apply what we learn  and be left to our own wisdom and force. Or we can apply the revelation and receive the blessings. Thankfully, our district was humble and we applied what was received and blessings have been poured out here in Amadora. Afonso the child that we were trying to help get baptized this past week but fell through, over came his problems and was baptized because of the revelation that was received in the workshop. Goes to show that we have leaders that have been called to help and have the right to revelation that will guide us to fulfill our purpose. 

I have changed the way I have been studying recently. I have been dissecting each verse of scripture that I read through questions. I read a scripture and with every phrase and word I make the most number of questions that I can and I see the scriptures through different lenses and receive revelation. The only thing is that it's a little annoying because it takes a lot of time. This week I spent 30 minutes pondering about 1 verse in the Book of Mormon. Our mission president is doing the same thing with the Book of Mormon, he started 5 months ago and is only in 2 Ne 7. But it's cool receiving that revelation.

The mission is going well and learning a lot and I'm having a blast.

rock n roll n righteousness.

Élder Fogg

New Lisbon Mission - Combining Portugal Lisbon and Portugal Porto

This week was real interesting.

Afonso: He is a kid that is 10 years old. He is really cool. He wants to follow Jesus Christ and be baptized. We are working with him and his mom so that that happens.

American names are hard here: My last name is probably the easiest name to say in English. Consisting of 4 letters it's a small name and easy to say. For Portugal my name is death.  Few achieve saying my name the right way within the first 5 attempts. And usually as they continue to correct themselves it worsens. The way they say my name here is very close to a swear word in English. It's really hard not to laugh when people just drop the ''f'' bomb in church and other sacred locations trying to communicate with you. But it's even worse when it's your mission president that's dropping the ''f'' bomb.

The missions are combining: Exciting news is that the missions Portugal Lisbon and Portugal Porto are combining to become the new Lisbon Portugal mission! That's going to be real interesting. President Filmore is going to be the new president of the new Portugal Lisbon Mission. 

Transfer Transformations: After Elder Martel has gone to the Açores that means that we got a new member to our squad here in Amadora. His name is Elder Abott. He is also from Canada but is much lower key than Martel was on that issue. We are all working hard helping people come unto Christ is this transfer. 

Élder Fogg