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Showing posts from April, 2018

Week 37: April 30,2018 - More of Leandra's Story

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Hey there good lookins!!! Hope you all are doing well!!!  Man, I just feel so blessed to have you all as my family!!! You all are so smart, so happy, so awesome!!! I loved reading all of your letters to me! That is my absolute favorite part of pday, hearing from all of you. Ellie, not gonna lie, you looked marvelous!!! Seriously!!!! Holy cow!!!! That looked like it was so much fun!!! I love hearing all the fun things you all are doing together!!!  We had a few neat miracles this week. Not gonna lie, this week was super slow. I'd never had so much rejection here in Portugal than this week. I felt super bad for my companion. Sort of like a bad start for him. We have some good ideas of how we are going to do better this next week though. We're pretty excited for that. We also had some super cool things happen too though. We met with one of our recent converts at the church to go visit some investigators with her. When we found her, she was standing outside with another guy ...

Week 36: April 23, 2018

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Well hello there everybody! How yall doin? All good here in Portugal!!! My new companion is awesome!!! His name is Elder Gusmão. He is from San Paulo Brazil! And yes, Im training!!!! Super crazy!!! He already had a transfer in brazil so Im basically just finishing up training his second transfer. He is super dedicated and already a professional at teaching! I honestly feel like I am learning more from him than he is from me. I feel like sometimes, God puts us in situations to do the opposite of what you think it would do. I think this is one of them as trainer. It's super weird being the one leading the lessons all the time too. But, it honestly wasn't too bad. I thought it was going to be a lot worse, but I think the spirit is making up all the rest for me.  We had a lot of neat things happen this Sunday. While we were in our gospel principles class, we got a call from one of our contacts and got to mark an appointment with them. Then, as we were outside by the computer...

Week 35: April 16, 2018 - 15 min miracles are worth the 15 hour 45 min trials

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15 min miracles are worth the 15 hour 45 min trials... Well, this was the last week of the transfer. They are going to cut this transfer short and extend the next one. I´ll tell you all what the plan is at the end of the letter.  This week was a bit of a trail week for me, yet a super successful week at the same time. We actually had an awesome week! We taught a bunch of people and worked super hard to teach in every moment possible. One thing I learned in our district meeting as I was talking to one of our zone leaders is that we should always be looking to teach as soon as possible when we are doing contacts. I think I had heard that before but never really registered it. I tried really hard to change my attitude about talking to people every where we go. I had always thought that when we do contacts, our goal is to mark an appointment with them and teach the next day or something like that, but I was completely wrong. Our goal should be to teach them right there in the momen...

Week 34: April 9, 2018

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Hey there Bartons!!!! We had a pretty sweet week! We've been working super hard to find more people!!! Elder Davis and I have been setting personal records with contacts!!!! We actually were shown a super cool area by Elder Vigne on pday. He took us on a little walk to this one area that is probably one of the coolest, best areas ever! Its basically a mini Africa!!! I didn't take any pics, didn't know if it was a good idea to be flashing my camera around, but I really wanted to show you guys what I saw! I was a pretty sketch neighborhood that was enclosed by a bunch of houses. These houses were pretty small and there was a ton of them! There were a ton of africans and a few Portugueses. The houses were just all sort of smashed together and it was like a big little maze. We literally walked through little pathways with walls of the houses 2 feet apart and little streams of dirty water running under our shoes. It was so cool! It was a super great area because the people the...

Week 33: April 2, 2018

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Dear Family, How y'all been?!?! You all look so good in your pics that you are  sending me! Seriously such an awesome family!!!!! It was an amazing Easter week this week. This week was sort of taken  over by meetings. We spent almost an entire day at a zone conference. It was actually super neat. Im really loving all the meetings we have  to learn and become better missionaries. One thing that our mission is  really focusing on right now is boldness. Its actually something I  really need to learn. Our president is amazing! He speaks to us with a  lot of power and authority. He told us that boldness was not being annoying or even forceful, it was teaching the gospel with clarity and  firmness. He said the way to develop that was be first, believing in  the gospel, then having faith, then repenting, then feeling the Holy  Ghost, then continuing with the process. It was basically the gospel  of Jesus Christ. I thought it was interesting...