The Green Door

OLÁ PESSOAS LINDAS!!!!!

What a week of adventures! Heavenly Father was good to us this week, as He is, to be perfectly honest, EVERY SINGLE WEEK. Where do I even begin?! Let´s start with the division we did in BRAGA.

Beautiful Braga!

So Braga is even more north than we are and it´s about an hour train ride from Porto. Let me tell you, that place is BEAUTIFUL. It´s a whole different world. Portugal is amazing because even though it´s a small country, every city is so different and has a bit of its own culture and even accent. Even though it´s colder up there, it´s stunning. Super clean, amazing buildings, not to mention it´s up in the mountains (Portugal mountains people, still got nothing on Utah or Colorado) BUT STILL. It´s in kind of a valley with trees all around. I CAN´T DESCRIBE IT TO YOU IT´S JUST SO BEAUTIFUL TAKE MY WORD FOR IT. 

But anyway, I went with Sister Baird which was fun. She got here to Portugal a transfer after me and she´s a sweetheart. We got to talk to some of their recent converts which are incredible. Divisions are fun but also kind of sad because I get to meet really, really cool people and members just to say goodbye to that city in a few hours. It´s also weird because I´m probably getting transfered in a couple weeks since I´ve been up here so long...crazy.

Sister Baird & the Best Bolo Berlim

This week, the miracles kept coming. It´s started raining again....(that´s not the miracle yet) and when I say raining, I mean, RAINING. POURING. We stopped in the house yesterday really quickly and before we leave the house we always pray. Me, being tired of 5 months of rain, just asked Heavenly Father to stop the rain. And He did! Okay guys, I know this miracle is one of the ones that most of the world population would call a coincidence, but to me it meant a lot. The minute I asked Him to stop the rain He did! And it didn´t start up again until after we got home that night! It was a nice little message from Heavenly Father that He loves me enough to have mercy on His wet little sister missionaries. He´s so GREAT.

Okay, but now for an even better miracle. One night this week, ALL of our appointments and backup plans fell through. We were tired after travelling from Braga but still had an hour. We decided to go visit a contact we did last week and so off we went. Well, we accidentally turned a few streets too early but decided to just keep going and loop around the other way. On the way, we passed this green door, one that I know for a fact that I have passed DOZENS of times but this time I really looked at it. Before I knew it, Sister Giberson went over to ring the doorbells of this building. I told her I thought of this door too so we got excited. She rang the 5th floor. Nothing. I said a quick prayer and really felt the 2nd floor so I rang it. A lady answered! She didn´t want anything. We rang all the other floors. The 4th floor answered! She didn´t want anything either. So we left, and kept going to find that old contact. We got to their building and they let us in, but then didn´t answer the door when we got up to their floor! So there we were with no plans. Naturally, we decided to say a prayer. Sister Giberson said one but to be honest I have NO idea what she actually said because all I heard was `Go back to that door. Go BACK to that green door!` It was loud, it was pounding, it was a little strange to be honest! After she finished the prayer I just looked at her and said, Well, I think we should go back to the green door. Soooo off we went! We talked to just about every person we saw on our way there. One of the guys, Sister Giberson really felt like she needed to talk to him. And...NOTHING! So as we´re coming up on that green door, we´re like, Okay, we´ll go ring the doorbells again but not the 2nd or 4th because we already talked to them. We get a little closer and we see a lady in the doorway! We make our way over and turns out she got locked out on accident and she was waiting for her husband to get home. She was wearing a nice shirt with pajama pants and super nice! Her name is Lydia, she´s from Brazil, and she is AMAZING. We introduced ourselves and she apologized! She said that she answered when we rang but because it was late she was worried about letting up a robber or something. She also told us, however, that the minute she hung up, that she felt really bad rejecting missionaries of Christ. She let us up when her husband got home and we met her sister. We didn´t have much time but we left her with a Book of Mormon which she was really excited about. Since then we´ve started teaching her and her whole family and needless to say, I´M SUPER EXCITED. It was seriously one of the most incredible experiences of my life. Heavenly Father knew, timed it out perfectly, and led us directly to her door. Oh, did I mention that she lives on the 2nd floor? :)

I´ll leave you all with a spiritual thought. I´ve been studying last General Conference´s talks all week and LOVING them. Elder S. Gifford Nelson has a great one called Hastening the Lord´s Game Plan. Long story short, he talks about a missionary that sacrificed a lot to serve a mission but served faithfully. He then shares this scripture in Isaiah 52:7

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth  peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!

My dear friends and family, I love you all and I love serving the Lord! I need you to know that I WILL return tired as anything, with a strong testimony, worn shoes, a love for the people and my Savior, and with lots of hugs for each and every one of you.  Remember, we have good tidings to share with the world!!!!! 

Com muitas saudades e amor,

Sister Swasey