Wednesday, January 28, 2009

From the Lighthouse....

Hello Hello Happy Family!!!

Oh my goodness! I just saw the pictures that Mark and Aup sent of their beautiful little Téairsa!! This wonderful news certainly caught me by surprise, I didn´t think she would be born for a few more weeks. So, how do you pronounce her name? She is so beautiful, just like her mom and dad! Mark, I´m liking the beard by the way. Very nice!

Thanks Kit for sharing those adorable things about Ryn and Elle. I´m so excited for Eden to be born too! Please be sure to send some pictures!

Ah, it is so wonderful to hear from all of you! I am so thankful for the blessings of modern technology that allow us to communicate so quickly. Everything is wonderful and moving along here in Seixal. Last Friday was a very busy day trying to do final preparations for our open house / Portas Abertas, Ana´s and Marley´s baptisms, and three lessons we had that night! Busy busy… woe to them that are at ease in Zion! But we had the Lord´s help to get these things done, since they are a part of His work! For Ana´s baptism we still had to finish doing the program, print it, and make copies. Turns out we weren´t able to print it out because the printer at the library we go to for checking our emails wasn´t working. But the Irmãs are wonderful and were able to print it and make copies for us Saturday afternoon before the baptismal service.

Saturday was pretty much a day at the church. We met there early, around 8:30 ish, and finished organizing things for the Portas Abertas. As a whole it went well. An investigator of the Irmãs and one of ours were able to show up and see everything we had prepared. Filiu, our investigator, is from Cape Verde, has really long hair in dread locks and looks like Bob Marley. His hair is awesome, I must admit, but hopefully down the road he can adopt the clean cut style. He really enjoyed learning about temple genealogy work and the plan of salvation. It was great! After the Portas Abertas the Relief Society president dropped off a lunch for Elder Corry and me, which was well appreciated. Ana´s baptism went very well. I was honored to baptize her, and there was a good turnout considering the difficulty of people coming at that hour when a lot of people are still working. And thanks again John and Laura for that Betty Crocker cookie mix – they were enjoyed with the other refreshments we had arranged. Marley´s baptism also went well, and more members were able to attend, and it was really nice. Haha, a funny story about the cookies – we had to bake them in the kitchen, and our ward mission leader was also staying at the chapel because he lives really far away, didn’t think some of the cookies were for the baptism, and he was chowing down on them. He would take a cookie, talk to us while eating it, and then go move some chairs or do something else. So after he had eaten 3 or 4, I wasn´t really counting, I put all the cookies on the same plate, put a paper towel over them, and put them behind some other bags on the kitchen counter to preserve them for their righteous purpose. We had a good laugh with Diogo later about it.

Also what was really great was that Osvaldo, another of our investigators, was able to attend both baptisms, and he really enjoyed it. He was able to meet and get acquainted with more members and feel the spirit. Before he left he said that he wanted to be baptized too!

Yesterday went really well also. We were finally able to meet with this one family that we had tried to meet with since I got here, but they had been really busy. The dad´s name is Luís and his wife´s name is Cristina. They have an autistic daughter name Raquel (10) and another daughter Daniela (9). They were really kind and excited to talk with us, and promised they would read and pray about the Book of Mormon. When we finished with them we had some time before we needed to go in, so we contacted for a while, and the first man we talked to was really cool. His name was Orlando and we talked about a lot of stuff – a simplified principles of the Restoration, why we go on missions, what we do in church, and Elder Corry even threw in talking about baptisms for the dead. He was really nice, and we left him with a pamphlet. Hopefully more comes of it, so we´ll see…

Well those are some of the highlights of the week! The Church is true and I love being a missionary! Love,

--Elder Ellis V
CM SBF FDP S&H

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