It is odd because sometimes a year and a half seems like such a short amount of time, but sometimes it seems really long- it is odd thinking that Bradley will be 15 and Carolyn will be almost 19 by the time I get home. At first it was really hard to imagine getting up and walking around and trying to find people to teach for another 16 months, but now that a month in Portugal has gone by I am realizing that it is going to fly by. (Somedays it still seems like a lot, and somedays are harder than others, but overall it seems more doable than it did at first)
There are loads of cats here, tons of strays everywhere, it is kind of sad. Our cats should be grateful that they have a nice warm home and a family to love them!
So today on Pday we went to this magnificent Catholic cathedral that is in our area, it was huge. It is way up on the top of the hills, and is really old and very beatiful architecture. It is called the ´Bom Jesus´ I took some pictures, I will send them next week. But it was pretty neat to see, the area around it is very nice too. They let anyone go in, so we went inside, and there were all these giant paintings and statues gold trim everywhere, everything was very detailed but it felt a little eerie inside. But it was neat to see, and kind of fun to be a ´tourist´for a change.
This week has been kind of crazy, full of ups and downs. There was this one guy we´ve been teaching, he is about 32 years old, and he quickly gained a testimony of The Book of Mormon and was very eager to get baptized. He was a ´golden investigator´ to the extreme. So we taught him Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then on Thursday we taught him about The Word of Wisdom. And he didn´t really like that, but he said he would try. But then on Friday and Saturday he was out of town (in hindsight it probably wasn´t good to teach that right before we wouldn´t see him for two days) and then on Sunday when we stopped by his house before church he said, thank you very much but I´m not interested anymore. It was heartbreaking, to say the least. Because of things he said and how he described how he felt before, I know he knew that The Book of Mormon is true and the things we are teaching are good. We are going to wait a little while and then stop by (we are teaching another investigator who lives a block away, so we are up there a lot anyway, we might even run into him in the street or something) and then if he still doesn´t want to talk to us anymore, let it be, I guess there really isn´t too much else we can do.
Oh but here is a happier story: there is this other guy we are teaching, he is a friend of the stake president. Well I feel like we can´t take too much credit for this, because when we met him he was practically a member, he´s already read The Book of Mormon, goes to church every week, everything. I don´t really understand why he hasn´t met with the missionaries before, or if he has, why he stopped, but anyway, he´s awesome. His only problem is that he smokes. A lot. But he has a very sincere desire to quit. So we pulled out a plan the church has for quitting smoking, and have all sorts of ideas for how to help him. But when we talked to him on last week, before we photocopied this plan and all these things, Irmã Lima told him to read The Book of Mormon everytime he wants to smoke, and to drink a liter of orange juice a day. And this morning we talked to him on the phone, and he hasn´t smoked since! It´s only been a few days, but things are looking good. But we will see, because it is hard to overcome an addiction like that, but I think the thing really going for him is the fact that he really truly wants to quit.
Yesterday the Elders had a baptism and we got to go, and it was really neat. Elder Baltodano, who was in my district in the MTC, did the baptism so it was pretty neat to watch. And we brought one of our investigators, so it was a good experience for him. I am hoping next week it is us who has the baptism! But who knows. I never realized how hard it is. I mean, I knew it was hard, but I didn´t realize that, after someone says they want to be baptized, have a specific date set, are so so excited, that usually, they end up not baptized. We´ve had people ´marked´ every week but yet to have it happen. (well we know by Saturday or so that it´s not going to happen, it´s not like a surprise on Sunday when they don´t show up) I know that it is a big decision and a big change, it is just odd when they are so excited and then... not. The only sad thing is usually they end up not talking to us anymore, rather than postponing or something. I am not really sure what we can do differently, though.
Thanks for all of your love and support. I love you all! Have a great week.
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