Hello world! I hope you all had a glorious Mother´s day yesterday, shout out to all of you wonderful mothers out there! I always tell people that my family are MY missionaries because seriously, where on earth would I be without all of the things that you have all taught me in my life?! Not in Portugal, that is for sure! I seriously have the best Mom, best Grandmas and best aunts EVER!!!!! (You fathers out there have to wait your turn for praise ;) Just kidding, you all are so wonderful! DO YOU EVEN KNOW?! I have to be honest, I don´t think I even really knew until they shipped me across the ocean to preach the gospel. But now, rest assured, I KNOW. You all mean so much to me!!! I can´t even say it better than just hope you all know how wonderful it is for me to be here doing what I´m doing. I think of you all so often and I just pray that the Atonement is touching your lives like it is COMPLETELY changing mine ENTIRELY. Seriously, who even was I before the mission?! It´s funny, you think you have a testimony and you think you´re a pretty good person then Heavenly Father sends you on a mission and really shows you what it means to believe in Christ and how important it all is and your testimony EXPLODES along with your heart because you just LOVE EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING.
This week I found (okay, refound because I know I´ve read it a bajillion times before) a super sweet scripture in 2 Nephi-
25 For, for this end was the l
26 And we talk of Christ, we
I have never had more faith in Christ nor have I ever felt more ALIVE than I do right now! It is so wonderful! All we have to do is just make Christ the center of our lives and then we live more, we´re happier and others know where to get that same happiness! Amazing.
Okay, one last rant and then I´ll tell you all about my great week! This week Sister Hirschi and I were waiting for a bus talking about the mission and she started comparing us as missionaries to desserts (stay with me people...). We decided that before the mission, we´re just like the dough but the mission really puts you through the oven, the refiners fire and makes us into the person, or shall we say cookie, that we were really meant to be all along. So elders are really brownies, because they HAVE to go through the oven, or else they stay that strange liquidy mix. Sisters are cookies because we have to remember that there are girls that don´t need to be missionaries to be the people they need to be and they turn out to be really awesome cookies! We call those the no-bakes. As for me and Sister Hirschi, we´re just not no-bake cookies... I need to be here, I need this hot fire to turn me into the person Heavenly Father wants me to be. Without the oven, I´m just cookie dough, which is like cool and all but not really what I was supposed to be. Also, there´s always danger of raw eggs in the mix and that´s not cool. SO ANYWAY, bring on the fire.
Sometimes I think Heavenly Father takes the fire thing literally because this week was HOT. I´m loving it though and I definitely don´t miss the rain! We had a great week of work too. Recently we´ve been working with Eduardo. Funny story, we were with a member who wanted to borrow our phone to call his friend. So Sister Hirschi asks for the number and dials it but doesn´t pass the phone to the member just yet...Eduardo, the friend, answers and Sister Hirschi starts telling him how we´re missionaries and asking if he wanted to talk to us AND HE DID. Fast forward 2 weeks and Eduardo wants to get baptized! Only thing holding him back right now is that he just got out of prison recently and so he can´t get baptized until he´s off probation. Cool thing is, he felt that. Before we even knew that he couldn´t get baptized he told us that he really wanted to but that the Spirit was telling him he needed to wait until he resolved all of his stuff. He´s like our own Cape Verdian Alma the Younger though, seriously what a change of heart he has had!
In the meantime, one day Eduardo showed up at our appointment with his friend Brito. Turns out Brito is AMAZING. He came to church with us yesterday and stayed for all 3 hours and LOVED it. So don´t worry, Eduardo is still progressing in the process of waiting-he´s already a missionary! It´s really cool to see the gospel touch people´s lives and lead them to want to help others too!
This week we also had a really neat experience. We went to try and visit this one investigator of ours, not really knowing if she´d be home or not. Well, turns out we knocked on the wrong door. Whenever that happens (which is often, haha) we just take advantage of the moment and contact the person. The lady at the door was not looking happy nor was she showing really any interest. Somehow, we get talking enough and she let us in. We ease in to teaching her about the restoration and the first time she smiled since we met her was when we talked about the First Vision. After we said it, I asked her what made her start to smile. She told us that it reminder her of two boys that used to visit her and HOW SHE GOT BAPTIZED IN THE CHURCH LIKE 10 YEARS AGO. Complete 180. From that point on she was so happy and even invited us to come back and visit her! Heavenly Father is really great at leading us to the people that need him. It gets better. So we left her house to go to our investigator. We know on another door AND...wrong door again haha. But guess what! The lady that open ALSO got baptized in the church like 20 years ago and was so excited to see sisters because she´d only ever met elders. Coincidence? I THINK NOT. It was a really cool experience to see Heavenly Father lead us to not one but TWO of His inactive daughters.
So yeah...life is just good here in Oeiras! (Oh-way-rash, for those of you struggling with Portuguese pronunciation ;)) The members are AMAZING and they feed us a ton which is always fun. We have one family that we eat with every week and this week they bought us root beer and Reese´s from the American store. I had no idea how much I missed those two random American items!!! In short, the members are very good to us and I love all of them already!
I´ll let you know how the big 40 years in Portugal celebration thing goes, it should be really sweet and cultural. There´s going to be Seventies there and everything! I´m stoked :)
Well guys, church is true and Christ lives. Love you all, until next week!
Com amor,
Sister Swasey
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