Week 69 Letter

Friday, September 26, 2014

Famlee!

I think this will be the last time that I write you from the mission office! President has already told me that I will be leaving with the new transfer, however, I still don't know where. I am excited to find out. I am super excited to get there and go to work! Today marks 15 months in Portugal for me. Crazy! That means 16 and a half months on the mission. I can't believe it has been that long. 2 years never seemed so short.

The week was busy with all sorts of things, but I will hit highlights. This week I have been training an Elder who came to the office because of a hurt knee. It has kept me busy with all of my other tasks, but it has been fun too. I swear, this Elder is an exact copy of Caleb Ybarra. Not how he looks so much, but his personality and how he acts is so similar! He reminds me so much of him.

I got my Portuguese driver's license as well this week which is cool. There are only a few areas here in Portugal with cars, so not many Elders get to drive. I guess president is really trying to take care of my ankle for me. Driving in Lisbon is quite different from driving in Spokane... luckily however I was able to pick up the stick shift without any problems and all the driving has gone smoothly until now. Getting the license was a huge pain though; I spent a good four hours waiting to get my numero de contribuínte (I don't know what it is in English. We don't use it in the states though.) On Wednesday and then no less than 7 hours yesterday to get the license. Anything government run here is going to give you a nice long wait. But after it all, we finally got it all taken care of. 

Sad part about leaving the office however is that I will miss Sara's baptism =/ She will be baptized October 5th, one week after I leave. I love seeing our investigators baptized, but the important thing is that she is baptized and that God sees it =)

Last night we got an interesting call from a very angry lady that we had taught once or twice... A member (Brazilian of course, Brazilians are trouble ;P) was on the street outside the church yesterday and started playing with a dog with a little rope that he picked up off of the ground. He was twirling the rope above the dog's head, and the dog was trying to get it in his mouth. Well, this lady who was the owner of the dog saw this, and started freaking out. She took the dog and walked quickly away. Well, later that night she calls us and starts accusing us of trying to do voodoo on her dog, or cast a devil into it. She belongs to A igreja Universal (The universal church; Shane, you probably have heard plenty of this church, I think it is one of those crazy Brazilian evangelical churches.) which believes a lot in demons and they are always 'casting out demons' in there church. Well, she thought we were casting a demon into here dog using a weird voodoo rope. It was a pretty irrational conversation as you might assume, and it ended with her telling us never to come back to teach her again. She said our church can't be true because we don't cast out devils in our chapels every Sunday; however we kindly pointed out that we don't even let demons through the front doors of our churches. Don't know if she appreciated that.  

Well, I need to get going. I love you all and really, really thank you for all of your love, prayers, and support. God loves each of you, and sees every kind act you do, and I bet he especially loves seeing the secret kind acts that we do. Let's do lots of secret kind acts =)

Love you!

Elder Lee