These past few weeks have felt very unfocused.  The life of a missionary changes from day to day and we have found our circumstances to be the same.  We still are in Beja and love this little town.  Our travels to support the Branch Presidents and our District Presidency continue to take us to the southern coast of Portugal for at least a day or two each week.  We also continue to travel into the Lisbon area frequently for administrative things.  Things that we used to see as unique and exciting enough to take pictures of now seem commonplace.  Isn’t it interesting that our lives are like that?  How many things do we have in our own backyard and in our own family and our own ward that we take for granted?  How often do we miss the little things that happen all around us because we are too busy or too preoccupied?  Sometimes we “can’t see the forest for the trees”.  That is enough reflecting!

 

Hey, another baptism.  This one is Daniel.  He is a bright young man.  He lives alone as do so many people here in Portugal.  He has been looking for work for the past several months and found a good job just a couple of days after his baptism.  Paula sat in on a couple of lessons with him, bore her testimony and served as a great example for him.  He likes to practice his English on us and Paula practices her Portuguese on him!  He is already making friends with a few members of our Branch here.  Ironically, two of these new-found friends are recent converts themselves, Bruno and Francisco.  They are already practicing the importance of friend-shipping!  It is awesome to see.  And then we have our constant ward members like President Ruberval (Branch President) and Simao (Branch Mission Leader).  There are others as well that do their best to keep the church alive and bless and convert their own families.  We sure hope that the Beja Branch will flourish and qualify to become a ward while we are still here on our mission.  What a blessing that would be.  Almost all of the members down here are “first generation” and we can’t wait to see what transpires over the next twenty years as we get more experience, stronger conversions, more temple sealings, more missionaries going out, stronger youth programs, etc.

We have also experienced more transfers.  We have two brand-new elders, Elder Palmer from Texas and Elder Fonseca from Cape Verde.  We will have to tell you about the incredible number of missionaries from Cape Verde later, and the spirit they bring to Portugal.  We also had Sister Nelson transfer out and Sister Palmer from South Jordan transfer in.  We are not sure we can stay up on all of the transferring that goes on constantly in the mission field.  Every one of them bring new spirits and new testimonies and it is incredible to see how the Lord works through these young people.  One interesting thing right now:  Here in our area of the Algarve, we now have more “foreign” missionaries than “home-grown” missionaries.  We have them from Cape Verde, England, Belgium, France, Bolivia, Ecuador, Texas, Idaho and Utah.  Get this:  We have four from Utah and four from Cape Verde!  Here is a photo of one of our Cape Verde Elders that is serving as a Branch President in Tavira.  This is his second time as a Branch President.  His first go-around as a Branch President was in Cape Verde when he was 18.  Amazing young man.  Very quiet, very friendly, and a smile that just warms the room.  Here he is with his companion, Elder Hatch, who is heading home.  Also a great missionary and wonderful young man.

 

Besides our own District Presidency we have also been working long-distance with the Presidents in the Madeira District and the Azores District.  Right now, between our four districts (including Santarem) we have three new chapels in process and working on two (and maybe three) others.  We are also looking at organizing a new Branch in Madeira and a new Group in Peniche.  Both Larry and Paula are hoping not to do all of these long-distance, but to be able to travel to Madeira and the Azores to see them in person.   Two of the chapels in our Algarve area (Olhao and Loule) could possibly be done by May.  We are excited to see the progress of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Portugal.