I forgot to bring my journal with me to write email, but hopefully I can remember a few of the things that happened this week :)
There is a less active member in our branch named Walter, who we have been visiting every week. Ever since our first visit with him about a month ago, he has started to come to church almost every Sunday.
And each Sunday he appears happier and looks better! The first Sunday after we started visiting him, he came with an old shirt with a pack of cigarettes in the chest pocket; the next week he came with a nicer looking jacket; then he came with a white button up shirt; and then this week he came with a tie!
Every week he is happy to be there, and I am happy to see him there. He has even started bringing up the Church with some of his friends, and will invite a few of them to the activity this week! Walter is Portuguese, but grew up in Angola, and spent several years working in South America. I am so grateful that we decided to start visiting Walter, and I´m so happy to be able to see him coming back to church, little by little.
Sometimes missionary work doesn´t just mean finding and teaching new people about the Church, but it also means finding those sheep that are already part of the flock, that have just wandered off a little ways.
We taught Antonio (the friend of Isac) this week again. We had prepared a good lesson about the Plan of Salvation, I had dedicated my studies to this, and I had felt strongly that we should teach this to him.
But when we met with him, it turned out that he had lots and lots of questions about prophets and apostles. So we ended up trying to explain to him about that topic. I feel bad to admit that in my mind I was a little annoyed, and was thinking "we prepared such a good lesson for today, and we won´t even be able to teach it! Why is he so obsessed with prophets today?"
It ended up being a good lesson anyways. But it wasn´t until later that I realized that it is important to prepare and study about a lesson, but to also realize that everyone has their own specific concerns and questions, and everyone progresses at their own pace.
We need to be ok with that, and cater the lesson to what they have the most difficulty with. I´m grateful that we have the opportunity to teach Antonio, and I look forward to Saturday when we will be able to teach him again. This time, I will be more understanding and willing to veer off of my plans.
This week we also found a new investigator named Mateus, from Brasil. He is super nice, and our conversation with him went really well. I´m excited to see how our visits go in the future!
On P-day we went to Serra da Estrela, the highest point in all of Portugal. We went with the Elderes of Covilhã and their branch presidente. Their branch presidente drove us all of the way to the top, stopping at points along the way to give us a sort of tour. Even though its the highest mountain in Portugal, Serra da Estrela is still only about half the height of our 14´ers in Colorado, haha. It was still cool to be at the top and see for miles and miles.There were a few shops at the top, and they all sold lots of different types of cheese that was produced locally. I´ll send the pictures in another email after this :)
I hope you all have a great week! I love and miss you all!
Love,
Elder Barker
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