Good news and bad news....Good news is Portugal is seriously everything I could have ever dreamed it could be and so so SO much more. Bad news, I don´t think I´ll ever leave here so....tchau para sempre.
Only joking of course! But seriously it´s fantastic!!!! The flight here was cool because I ran into a lot of Brasilians along the way! We all were super psyched to talk to people already. I sat in between missionaries the whole way over but other people placed my copies of the Book of Mormon so that counts I guess ;) I even talked to some Portuguese kids right before our flight to Lisboa.
The Fluckigers (Flew-key-grrrrs) are AMAZING. I love them already. And now for the news you´ve all been waiting for- My first area is called Caldas da Reinha! It´s about an hour north of Lisbon. It means Something of the Queen, nobody seems to know exactly what Caldas means, including my companions Sister Blanco, WHO IS A NATIVE BRASILIAN. Am I blessed or what? I´m seriously loving every single second that I spend with her. The second she saw me she hugged me like a crazy person and it was awesome. Everyone I talked to before meeting her and getting here just couldn´t tell me enough how lucky I am. Caldas is in the area where the next stake of Portugal will hopefully be and I´m here to work as hard as I can to try to make that happen! Don´t let any of you be fooled when it comes to the work here in Europe- it´s happening! I´ve been to two baptisms already! One was in Lisbon and one here in Caldas. It´s sweet too because we don´t have a font here so good old Antonio was baptized in the ocean!!! Sweet, não é?! Antonio is pretty quite but really sweet and patient with my bad Portuguese. After he got baptized he swam around a bit and smiled from ear to ear for a long time after. It was one of the coolest experiences of my entire life.
Anyway, here in Caldas there are two sets of sisters and a set of Elders. Sister Blanco and Sister Prieto are training Sister Vomocil and I. They do not speak ANY English to us. Nada. I know that they do speak at least some English now because we contacted two guys from India who didn´t speak Portuguese and Sister Blanco totally talked to them. It´s good that she doesn´t speak any English with me though because it forces me to pay attention and I´m learning TONS.
The first day went so fast it was just kind of like, wait, what? But now it really is great. I understand a lot more than I expected to which is awesome! Depending on the person I can get the gist of what they say enough to respond. It´s much easier for me to understand the Brasilian accent right now but I´m getting better with the Portuguese one. We taught these two awesome recent converts and I literally cannot understand a WORD they say. But they´re old and hardly open their mouths so I´m sure it will just come with time. They´re seriously awesome though. Alberto and João are like my two Portuguese grandpas here or something. I don´t understand them but they mostly just love to talk and have someone listen so I´m good at that.
Portuguese people are really nice, totally do the whole kiss on either cheek thing (so chic), are REALLY short (haven´t met a single person taller than me yet), love to tell me the random cities they know in the states, and are all in all just fantastic. They´re pretty nice and receptive when we contact them on the streets too. Contacting is a little intimidating but I´m working really hard to just open my mouth and have more faith.
My first contact I did by myself. We were all talking in the parking lot and I saw a man with his dog and I decided to go talk to him. Sister Vomocil eventually came over too and these two Americanas gave him a Book of Mormon and got his number to set up another appointment! He´s so ready to hear the gospel and had a lot of great questions. I´m excited to teach him today!
AHHHHH I DON´T HAVE ANYMORE TIME. Love you all and love Portugal!
Sister Swasey
No comments:
Post a Comment