What a week! I have never been so busy in my life! The AP´s came down to our zone to do "workshops" so they spent p-day and then 4 more days with us in our house. On Monday night we took our investigator, Susana, who is close to baptism, to Mama's house. MAMA is a wonderful, african member who speaks her mind! We had a family home evening there and then ate dinner. The food was great but there was steam everywhere and I felt like I was in an oven!! (In Portugal there is no insulation or air conditioning so when it's hot outside it's even hotter in the house!) It was funny, all ten of us were drowning in our own sweat, hahaha!
Tuesday morning we did our first workshop with one of our districts...basically there are 4 groups and the zone leaders and the APs. So we met with them and took about an hour to identify their biggest difficulty and helped them come up with some answers. I kind of felt like I was a psychologist trying to manage all those personalities! We did one in the morning then drove with the AP's in the afternoon to the other district to do another one. That night we only had 3 hours to work...we actually got lost and found ourselves in the middle of this gypsy neighborhood with a bunch of apostasy happening all around us and people screaming at us....good experience--hahaha!!
Then on Wednesday morning we did another workshop in the last district and right after we did a great division with the Elders in Lagos (the famous beach town in Portugal)! Thursday morning we headed back to Faro by train and once we got home at 10 am we left for Tavira to do another divison. It was really weird going back to Tavira, we visited many of my old investigators and members! It was a day of lots of mixed emotions!
We got home Friday at lunch...not having worked in our area for 1 whole day this week. Not having a lot of time, we decided that we had to give it our all--every second to find someone. I have never done so many contacts in my life. We went to an appointment with Diogo and instantly recognized his Brazilian accent. He moved to Faro from Brazil a month ago and feels really lonely. Surprisingly he knew a lot about our church already and said he would like to know more. We told him that it would be great to meet with him that night in our church. He said yes but usually these contact plans fall through. We prayed that he would be there and he actually showed up! Before the lesson he asked when we had church. We told him, "tomorrow at 9:30", he responded, "I cant' go because I already made another appointment to go to a different church this weekend". But that didn't get us down! We taught him the first lesson and it was so powerful. Everything just ran so smoothly, I felt the presence of the spirit through the whole lesson. We marked him for baptism the 9th of September. We invited him again to come to church. He said that he waned to but he would pray about it. The next morning we called him to see where he was and he didn't answer so we thought he was going to the other church. We started walking to church when we heard this Brazilian voice say, "Hey Elders!" He was running towards us wearing a white shirt and black slacks saying, "Are you guys ready to go to church?" We couldn't believe it!! In our branch here in Faro we have a lot of Brazilians and they made him feel like he was home! He absolutely loved church and said, "Well, I am coming back and want to talk to you guys everyday!" We could see how the Lord put all of the pieces together in that miracle! I am just so grateful to be working for Him!
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