Transfers! Again!


Hello, my name is Sister Hardy and I am officially the nomad of the mission. I have once again been transferred! This time I am going way up north to the beautiful Portugues city... Porto! I am actually super duper excited! I have been hoping I would serve up north my whole mission and I have heard so much about how beautiful and old Porto is, I am so excited to explore and meet everyone! Ive heard it is a lot different in the North because there are way less immegrants from Brazil and Africa, so there is a much larger ratio of Portuguese peopl. I love portuguese people, so it is going to be awesome! I will be serving with sister Allred. I have already done a division with her and hung out with her on P-day even and she is AWESOME! She is super sweet. She has less time on the mission than me, but that is becoming more and more common these days... I will do 11 months tomorrow. Uncomfortably close to a year. I dont want my mission to last forever, but I do feel like it is going too fast. I still have so much to learn! 
    
 Anyway, lets talk about this week! We did a lot of service this week helping a member who is moving. She actually wasnt there, she is living in France, but she asked her daughter in law to pack everything up in boxes and clean the house so she can rent it out, and she will come look through the boxes later. So we were called to help. We spent two mornings packing up her apartment. It wasnt that big, but it was FULL of stuff! The more we packed away the more there seemed to be! If there is one thing I have learned on my mission is how to live with minimal belongings, and honestly, I prefer it that way now. I have gotten so good at picking and choosing what I need and what I dont need, this transfer I am leaving with less stuff than I came out on my mission with! It feels pretty good. I basically kept track of what stuff I didnt touch once that transfer and threw it out. My bags are light and my mind is clear! That is definitely a pattern I want to perpetuate. Anyway, it was good to serve, and she had couches in her apartment! I havent just sat on a couch with the intention of being comfortable in so long! The only times I sit on one is to teach a lesson, and then I am all sitting forward and stuff with 100% attention on the other person, not my enjoyment of a comfortable chair. It was pretty nice.
        
 AND THEN..... BAPTISM!!! We have been teaching Mickael this whole transfer. He was introduced to the church and the missionaries by member friends and he has really been seeing a difference in his life since starting to meet with us, read the scriptures, and pray. He was progressing really really well, but we never felt like it was right to invite him to be baptised. I think I told this story in my last email, but I am doing it again cuz its cool. He went to the temple open house, and the next time we met with him he basically asked if he could be baptised! It is better that way I think, when they come to the conclusion themselves, it is more personal for them that way. Stronger. Anyway. So this week we taught him everything super duper fast, and he had no problems and was super excited for his baptism! He invited his friends and family and some of them agreed to come, which made him even more excited! His interview was on Friday and our district leader came up from Caldas to interview him. We forgot his baptismal form at home so we had to run the 15 minutes there and 15 minutes back to grab it, and so while we were gone we gave our key to the chapel to our district leader and asked him to take Mickael and find Baptismal clothes for him. So finally we all get back and he passes his interview and everything is great. We eat dinner and the elders leave to go back to their area. That night at 9:30 Elder Hansen calls us and says... "sooo... I just realized I have the keys to your chapel." We were like "shoot! thats fine, just come back tomorrow for the baptism, no big deal." Later, after lights out we are laying in the dark ready to sleep when suddenly I remember... the font! We have to fill the batismal font the next day! It takes two hours to fill and the baptism is at 11 so we have to start filling it at 9am. We call elder hansen at 11:15 and he answers groaning and moaning, and we ask them to come earlier. After we hang up we remember that a member of the bishopric lives right next to the chapel and we could borrow his key! So we call Elder Hansen again to tell him they dont have to wake up early, they can just come when they can. The next morning we go get the key from Pablo, and we go to the chapel and we discover that the door to the room with the water heater and the drain plug can only be opened by the missionary keys... and we dont have one. And Elder Hansen and Haggard arent going to get there until 11. We were freaking out. I actually thought about stuffing the drain with a t shirt and filling the font up with buckets. Then we remembered the ward mission leader would have the key to open that door, but we dont have a ward mission leader. We call irmao Tavares, the elders quorum president and hope that the key he has happens to be the same as the ward mission leaders. He lives not too far away and he gets to the chapel, and miracle of miracles... the key works!!! He starts helping us get everything working, turning on the gas, but then the water heater wasnt working... and time is running out... so we just start filling the font with cold water. Better cold than dry. Finally the hot water starts working and so the water ended up being tepid. Not warm and pleasant, but at least it wasnt freezing cold. Though Pablos face when he stepped in to perform the baptism would say otherwise. I guess we forgot to warn him lol. But it was amazing. After that everything went smoothly and it was a beautiful baptism, and Mickael was super happy. Confirmation the next day went smoothly as well. It is so interesting how satan is always at work. Every single baptism, there is something that goes wrong. Something that gets forgotten, or lost. But in the end, everything went great and he was baptised! And we found out today that he got invited to watch the temple dedication from INSIDE the temple!!!! WHAT!!! It is so cool! He is going to be such a wonderful source for good here in Portugal and in the church, I am so excited for him.
   
   Anyway, that was this week, it was a good one. Good luck with back to school everyone! 

Love, Sister Hardy.

Photos to follow in a separate email.

-Last day in Leiria
-District activity, we did contacts in the park together! 
-Mickaels baptism! 
-the first elder who started teaching him was able to come to the baptism! 
-coxinhas! I just helped fold them into shape, which I was TERRIBLE at, but it was super fun! 








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

One year older and wider too

Image
I don't have a lot of time today, we had an awesome pday! So this email might be a bit shorter! Sorry!   Tuesday - we had district counsil of course and then we did our studies. We had an appointment but she canceled so we decided to finish up the last session of general conference! It was so so so good! I loved President Nelson's talk! I now have a goal to memorise the full version of the first vision. I have the missionary part done, just need to do the rest! Then we spent the rest of the day finding. It was one of those days where you knock a ton of doors and they aren't there or don't want anything and you contact people and they ignore you. But we did our part!   Wednesday - We did Divisions in Gaia! We went over there and we got off at the wrong metro stop without knowing and they "weren't there yet" so we bought some cool jewelry from one of those pop up places in tourist spots and took some pics, then they called us and asked wher...
Read more

Blitz it

Image
Sorry I didn't send an email last week! We had a crazy pday! We were up early and went to a beautiful place called sete cidades with the sister APs (they flew in Sunday night) then later we got ice cream with President (who flew in on Monday) and that was the end of pday! That night we had 8 sisters in our area! Mega blitz! I went on a division with one of our stls Sister Prado. She is from Ecuador and has the cutest accent when she speaks português! We go home together so it was fun to serve with her for a little bit. The next day we had conference for the island missionaries! I was glad it was separate because the island is truly different than any of the other areas I served in on the continent. After conference I got to go on a division with one of our sister APs Sister Nilson! I love her! She reminds me of Lizzie a lot. Really fun, hard working, faithful, sporty, and beautiful. We did good work together. Then on Wednesday I went out with the other sister AP Sister Ho...
Read more

The final countdown

Image
Starting an email is the hardest part, and no matter how many I have written, they never get any easier. So I guess I'll just jump right in!   Last Monday we had a fun chill pday. We took a bus over to Ribeira grande and ate pizza and went to the beach with the elders. The waves were ENORMOUS! I had dreams about tsunamis that night. Lol.   Tuesday we had the last district counsel of the transfer. We knew elder Miranda was leaving the island after his 4 transfers, so we had a big breakfast all together with French toast bread pudding, juice, and cornbread. Kinda a weird breakfast, but it was yummy! We have had a good time together, and we will miss Elder Miranda, our fearless leader. But Élder Pullan will take his place as our fearless leader this transfer so all is well. And Elder Miranda is off to fearlessly lead a zone. So proud of them!   Later this week we went to visit a less active family and it turns out that the Carters had visited only an ho...
Read more