Week 36: April 23, 2018

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 computers, one of the members was talking to a friend in France over the phone. She came up to us and started saying how her friend really needed the missionaries and that she wanted to send them over to her house. We showed her how to send references over the computer. It was super neat! She was telling us her friends story and how grateful she was that we were helping her with that. I'll never think about references the same after yesterday. 

She then started talking to us about her husband who isn't a member and told us how difficult it is to live sort of split like that. She said how she is trying super hard to be patient and she is waiting and hoping for the right missionary that will come and convert her husband. That sort of hit me how we were called for specific people like that. 

While I was on a split with another elder, Elder Lewis, we listened to a talk when we got back to the house in his area in Sacavém. I Forget the name of the talk and who was talking, but it was about a young man who had initially started out to become a catholic priest and then was converted and served a mission. In his talk, he said how he had baptized a lady and how she later had him read her patriarchal blessing. You have to hear the rest of the talk to know why he had to read the blessing for her, but he read it and it said how she could have been baptized 25 years earlier if the person that was called to minister to her had left on his mission. That sort of blew my mind! I never wanted a thing like that to happen with me. I always hope I am prepared and doing my part to be able to say in the end that I had done all that I promised to do. Back to the member that we were talking to, she then invited us over to have a family night at her house with her husband. We looked up some good church videos, and I think we found one that will be really good to share with them later tonight!

Oh, also, one of my dreams and prayers came true!!! At the baptism for the sisters in our area, my companion had left, Elder Davis, and he usually played the piano at the baptisms, and the lady in our ward that played the piano wasn't going to be there either. So, I got to play the piano for the baptism!!!! It was soooo cool!!! I played I am a Child of God and Sweet Hour of Prayer, It was so much fun! I got like a little adrenaline rush as people were singing along to the melody that I was playing!!! It was so cool!!!! 

This is funny; at the end too, I played like a little roll out from the bottom of the key board to the top of the last chord and the sister that was leading the music ended and was walking in my direction to sit down as I played my little roll out and she gave me the funniest look! She gave me the look of like, "what are you doing?!?!?!" Ya, I think I got a little too into it. Don't know If I'll be playing again, hahahahaha! Just kidding!!! It was super awesome though!!!!

Anyways, Love yall tons!!! Thanks for all the letters and love!!!!

Love,

Elder Barton