Happy 2018!

Michael Frank Barker <michael.barker@myldsmail.net>	Mon, Jan 1, 6:35 AM
to Babzanne, Bruce, Charbel, Cheryl, Chris, Daniel, DeWayne, Eric, Kent, Michael, Paul, Reed, Tammy, Kirk, Elder, Alexis, Brandon, Diana, callleeann, Jessica, Forrest, me, Brittany, John, Anna, Jake, Patrice, Barb, Erik, Kristalyn, Linda, Mason, Matt, hanceyfamily, Rick, David, Abigail, Haley, Gillian, Mark.Stutz, matt, AJ, Cindy, Linda, Meagan, Mickal, Vince, Michelle, Kurt, Bailey, Frank, Marci, Karen, Karen, Danielle, Lisa, rwdubois55, Janine, Lew, Mark, DeAnne, Carol, Paul, Winston, Joseph

Olá!

I hope you all had a Happy New Year! In Portugal, New Years is a holiday that they love to celebrate and shoot off fireworks for! Apparently the fireworks show in Funchal is the biggest in the world, so we asked for permission to go and see it if we had a member of the church with us to give us a ride, and our Mission Presidente denied it,  haha. 

Even though we weren´t able to go to funchal, we were still woken up at midnight by the fireworks show going on in Machico, so we watched them from our window! It was pretty impressive! 
​This week was also a very good week, because our investigator, Paulo, decided to be baptized! 

He was the one that when we first met him, he was calling us of the devil and that we needed to be careful with the Book of Mormon. After we started teaching him, we invited him to be baptized several times, but each time he told us that it was too soon or that it was too big of a commitment. 

Well last week we passed him on the street and he told us that he had something important to tell us about baptism, so we marked a day to pass by his house. When we got there, we asked him what he meant, and he said that he had been thinking, and decided that he wanted this "contract" with God. That he wanted to be baptized and be forgiven. So we set a date for January 27th!  

Our lessons have been even more effective this week, because his two sons have been staying with him over Christmas break. They are 11 and 9 years old, but have been understanding everything, and even said the opening and closing prayers in our lessons! They also want to help their dad, which became clear when they took his glass of wine while he wasn´t looking and threw it down the sink, haha. Paulo still has awhile to go before he is ready for baptism, but I know that with the help of God, everything is possible!

We were also able to get back in contact with Rui Duarte (an investigator from a few months ago), and he wants to keep receiving the lessons!

I hope you all have a great first week of 2018, and that your new year´s resolutions can last for a few more days ;) !  

I love and miss you all!

Love,

Elder Barker