We started off this last week by going to another Zone Meeting in the city of Viseu! To get to Viseu, we have to take a three hour bus ride that has stops in five other cities. I´m getting pretty good at falling asleep on buses, since we use them to get to all of our mission meetings, haha. Our zone is one of the smaller ones, with just 16 missionaries. I always enjoy zone meetings and conferences, because it gives us the opportunity to get to know the other missionaries in our mission and we always walk away feeling more inspired to do better in our areas. My companion from the MTC is still in this zone, so it´s also been fun to see how he´s doing!
Even though the meeting was in the morning, we didn´t get back to our area until about 9:30pm because we had to wait for the bus which would take another three hours back to Castelo Branco, haha.
The next day we held another "Family Home Evening" for the branch. We almost decided to cancel it this week, because the last week only three members showed up, and we didn´t think it would be a very good use of our time.
But as we were walking down the street, we saw two of the members that went last week, and they asked if we were going to have the FHE again. When we told them that we weren´t going to, they got a little dissapointed. Afterwards we started to feel that maybe we should give it one more chance this week, so we called those two members and told them that we were actually going to have the activity. We then started calling all of the members and investigators to let them know.
When the time for the activity came, only the same three members were there.
But after about another 15 minutes more and more people started showing up! We ended the night with about 12 people at the Family Home Evening!
We had planned a short game that involves: a chocolate bar, a fork and a knife, dice, and a pair of socks, haha. Afterwards we shared a spiritual thought and had some food. Everyone really enjoyed the night!
What made it worth it for me were two things: one of our less-active members and her two sons came (she and her sons have never once been to church or an activity since I arrived in April) and all the members were laughing and having a good time. For the next family home evenings, we are really going to insisit that the members bring their friends, because this is a good opportunity for them to be introduced to the Church in a non-threatening way!
On Saturday we were in the ancient part of the city knocking on doors in the alleys by the castle, haha. It seems that about half the homes near the castle are either completely deserted or just have old people staring out their windows at us ;).
But it was in one of these roads by the castle that we found a few new really cool investigators. We knocked on a door, and a young man a few years older than me opened the door. We introduced ourselves as missionaries from the Church of Jesus Chirst of Latter-day Saints, and he said "oh, I love to hear anything about Jesus Christ, come on in!"
As we began to share our message, he interrupted us and said " wait, would you guys like to share this message with my twin sister too? She lives just down the street. Come on, let´s go!" So we ended up teaching both him (Daniel) and his sister (Sandra) the first lesson! Even though the lesson wasn´t very organized, and I ended up spilling my water all over Sandra´s floor (that´s another story, haha), I feel like it was a success and I´m excited to keep teaching them!
About Djara, we called to set up a time to meet with her, but she said that her mom had just made a surprise visit from Cape Verde, and she didn´t know when she would have time to meet us. But a little bit later she said, "actually, would you guys like to eat lunch with us tomorrow, it´ll be cachupa." So we ended up eating a traditional cape verde lunch with them and about 12 other cape verdians, all speaking Creole (a dialect from Cape Verde, so I didn´t understand anything that was going on).
This saturday we also helped a member move a bunch of furniture up four flights of stairs. Needless to say, both me and my companion are still super sore, haha.
This week went better, and I know that this next week will be even better! It´s starting to cool down a little bit in the evening which is really making it nicer around here, haha.
I hope you all have a great week! I love and miss you all!
Love,
Elder Barker
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