Week 99: July 8, 2019

Dear Family,
It seems like this week flew by. We had zone conference and did a split with Elders from Beja which is a long ways away from us. It took 2 hours in the bus to get there! The split with the elders in Beja went super well. I got to go with Elder Dowdle for the first half. He is from my same MTC group! We did lots of contacting.

We actually found a building for student housing in their area. We went inside and decided to ask the manager of the building if we could do a little presentation in front of the students. Unfortunately, he didn't permit it. We then asked if we could put some invites up for the church and he was totally fine with that. We had some fun knocking doors together. We went up and I would say every time that we had to read the house to know which knock we needed to do. So we would go up, for example, and take a look at the house. I would point out the statues or a Brasilian flag and tell Elder Dowdle, "Ok, we're goin with the classic Stonewall Jackson knock" or some thing like that. It was pretty funny.

We all went back to Setubal the next day to work and stay the night. When we got back, Elder Ixtlahuac and Elder Dowdle went off together and I went with Elder Garcia. He was pretty awesome. While we were in the train to get over to Setubal, I had the prompting that I needed to make a bunch of phone calls to try and schedule some visits. I was able to get one visit scheduled for us with a guy named Jose. We went to our apartment to drop our stuff off and then went straight to his house. He welcomed us in right away and had us sit down. To be honest, I didn't remember him when we talked on the phone, but I remembered right away when I saw him. He was someone we contacted while we were on the street. We started a light conversation with Jose and 2 of his friends that were living with him that also came from Brasil: Vitor and Vinicius. They all had been here in Portugal for very little time. We taught an amazing lesson about the Restoration. I give props to Elder Garcia! He was amazing! He had us start off by reading in Galatians chapter 5 where it talks about the fruits of the Spirit. It was a great way to help them recognize the Spirit throughout the message. At the end, they told us how they felt peace during the message. Vinicius said that he got the chills when Elder Garcia recited the first vision. They said we were welcome to come back at any time.

We had zone conference the next day. Elder Clark and a new missionary, Elder Lonergan, stayed the night as well with us. Elder Clark is awesome! I had so much fun talking with him. We went for a run in the morning and went on a super awesome trail. I ended up getting us lost!!! But, we eventually found our way back!! Hahaha!!! We just got a little extra on our run because of it!

Zone conference went well. Elder Ixtlahuac and I lead the training for the Setubal zone; it seemed a little rushed with a bunch going on, but people said that they liked it in the end. All the missionaries going home got up and bore their testimonies at the end. It was at least a 3rd of everyone at the zone conference! Huge group! It was sad but at the same time neat to see how far we'd come. I just bore a simple testimony of what I know is true. I felt the spirit the most when I said how grateful I was that God let me serve here in Portugal.

I've been thinking a lot more lately about how blessed I have been my whole life and how thankful I am. I know I have been given much, and because I have been given much, I too must give.

Love always,
Elder Barton

Photos
1) Elder Garcia and I after the lesson with Jose, Vitor, and Vinicius