11/27/17 - Luis was baptized & a Burger King Thanksgiving

Another crazy full week. We finally finished our workshops so that is good. Workshops are so sweet because we get to see a lot of Portugal and we get to know a lot of the missionaries. Unfortunately we were doing workshops on Thanksgiving Day so our grand thanksgiving dinner was the drive through at Burger King on our way home!

Our area is doing well and we are still working with Nilton, Paula, and their 3 children. The whole family came to church! Also, we found this man named Nelson, who is from Angola and is super cool!! He came to church with us and everyone was in awe because he is a natural born leader.      We say, "He is elect." He was answering questions and giving his opinions in the class. He will go to Africa next week and bring his family of 5 here and he said he wants us to teach them. We are super excited to continue this process!  We visited an investigator who was in the hospital and the hospital made me super uncomfortable.

This week we were close to breaking the mission record for baptisms in a month! I have never talked so much on the phone in my life! We have 4 days left and we are really close so pray for us! 

Easily the miracle of the week was Luis.....remember Luis? He is an old investigator we found 8 months ago when I was in Alverca for one transfer. I left and he lost contact with the missionaries. At the beginning of this transfer I told one of my friends who is serving there to look for him. They found him and I got a call this weekend from him asking me to baptize him! It was such an incredible experience that I’ll never forget! It was so good going back to Alverca and seeing all of those amazing members. After the baptism Luis just looked at me and said...I am clean, I am clean, I am clean! It was such a great night!

The spiritual thing I learned this week is that wisdom comes from being humble and putting in effort. If we really want to be wise or earn something we need to be humble through receiving counsel and be willing work.

The temporal thing I learned is that in Portugal you need to know how to parallel park in the smallest spaces. I’m still learning you can say. The mission is great. I don't want it to end!

Love you all!

Èlder Herrmann 

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11/20/17 - Workshops & Benfica

This week was super busy but really good. We started off the week in the Algarve doing "workshops" where we meet with every district in the mission to do a training and help remind the missionaries of stuff they already know but need help to apply so that they can have more success in their area. We did workshops for 2 days in the Algarve and then returned to Lisbon. The next day we went to another zone to do more workshops. It is so amazing to see the Spirit work through us to help resolve specific problems. We’ll finish the workshops with the rest of the mission next week.

We had Friday night and all day Saturday to work in our area and saw miracles happen! With so little time we knew we needed to take advantage of every minute…or in other words we needed to "light it up!". So on Friday night we did a division with the zone leaders of Lisbon and I was in Mem Martins with my old comp, Elder Richards. We served together in the Açores for 3 months so we were super pumped to be together again. We were doing contacts near the metro station where there were so many people during rush hour when we received a call from a recent convert named Finda.  She told us that she had a friend at her house that she wanted us to meet. We went over there and met her friend, Edi, who is a mom of 2 and is also from Guinea Bissau. We are now teaching her and she seems interested.

Also we are teaching a family of Niltonand, his wife Paula, and their 3 children! They are from Angola and incredible but are having hard times. The miracle of the week was after we taught Edi, Elder Richards and I returned to the metro station where we were doing contacts and met Dora from Cape Verde. We had a really good contact and asked if we could follow her to her house and teach her. She said yes so we went there and taught her and her 2 sisters! They are so funny and really have a lot of potential. The Lord has been preparing this area, we need to just continue to have faith and keep working.

The temporal thing I learned this week is to always be aware of how much gas is in the car, especially in traffic. We were on empty and had to make some crazy maneuvers to get to a gas station.

I learned a lot about faith this week. Before my mission I always thought that faith was “believing”, but it's so much more! We need to put action into our faith, our works is how our faith will be measured. I want to show my faith this week through the works of meeting our goals!

Today was a sweet pday.  We took a tour of the amazing Benfica stadium (Benfica is a huge soccer club in Portugal). We saw everything from the field to the locker room. It was a great experience!

-Elder Herrmann

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11/13/17 - Taking upon us the name of Christ

This week was amazing!! First off, I went to the mission office and slept there Monday night. Then Tuesday I met up with my new comp Elder Egbert.  We got to Mem Martins and then went to the airport to pick up the new missionaries (see photos.)  It was fun to see them all confused and I remembered back to that busy and strange first day in Lisbon. We all then headed to the mission home and had dinner with them. 

The next day was super busy.  We had a mission conference and the visiting General Authorities Elder Stephen W. Owen and Elder Devin G. Durrant spoke to us.  It was excellent!  Some of the points I loved were:  

"Learn to get through things, not out of things."  

"At home we have jobs. But here we are at work."  

"It matter's not where you start on the mission, but where you end."  

"A mission is more of a process than an event."

One cool thing about my change is that we are in a house of 4 elders and one is named Elder Isaiah Galland.  So it turns out we are from the same stake in Utah.  His family moved into our neighborhood there recently and our houses are a few blocks from each other.  Crazy! Yep, four people in my home stake are here in this mission!  He is really cool and a great missionary!

The best part of the week would definitely be our daily meetings with President and Sister Tavares.  They are so awesome!  They are like our parents.  They are so easy- going around us and love us so much. I really do feel their love for me and its the best experience being around them. I love their examples and their wise advice about life.  I've learned that we have to be really thoughtful and prayerful about what we propose to president because he totally trusts us and usually will implement what we suggest.  It's pretty stressful!  We just planned a lot this week and I learned so many things about running the mission.  

As for our own area, we only have about 2 hours at the end of each day to work in it.  And miraculously, with that little amount of time, we already have people preparing for baptism. We are working with members and getting referrals.  It's such a more effective way to work.  We are teaching a couple of people right now. One of them is named Edlim.  She is from Guinea Bissau and has had a really hard life, but we are seeing great progress from her. 

Today (P Day), we had a fun road trip and drove down to my old area in the Algarve.   We will be training some new leaders there for a couple of days.  We even had a barbecue on one of the beaches.  Man I love the Algarve.  I'm going to miss it.  

The spiritual thing I learned this week would be from my personal study on "what does it mean to "take upon us the name of Christ." In the scriptures these verses in Mosiah 5 address this.  "And we are willing to enter into a covenant with our God to do his will, and to be obedient to his commandments in all things that he shall command us, all the remainder of our days, that we may not bring upon ourselves a never-ending torment, as has been spoken by the angel, that we may not drink out of the cup of the wrath of God." 

This is our covenant when we are baptized and what we get in return for taking upon us the name of Christ and doing our part is in verses 8 and 9. 

"8 And under this head ye are made free, and there is no other head whereby ye can be made free. There is no other name given whereby salvation cometh; therefore, I would that ye should take upon you the name of Christ, all you that have entered into the covenant with God that ye should be obedient unto the end of your lives.
9 And it shall come to pass that whosoever doeth this shall be found at the right hand of God, for he shall know the name by which he is called; for he shall be called by the name of Christ."

If we do our part and take the name of Christ upon us, acting as He would act, being obedient in all things to the end of our lives, we will have salvation at the last day and be found at the right hand of God.  I am trying everyday to fulfill my part of this covenant and I know that through Christ, these promises are true. 

Amo Vocês!
- Elder Herrmann

11/6/17 - BIG CHANGES!

Wow what a week! Yesterday we got transfer calls...I got a call from President Tavares in the afternoon and he told me that I will be the new AP in the Portugal Lisbon mission. I was shocked.... I instantly felt like I was going to throw up. My comp will be Elder Egbert who is also from my MTC group so that’ll be great! The assistants to the president live in an area in Lisbon called Mem Martins. I am so excited to go there and start working! It’ll be weird having a car and a smartphone. Tonight I’m heading to Lisbon and then will start to work the next morning with meeting the new missionaries and everything. It will sure be an adventure!

Other than that my week was pretty normal. We had a district meeting in Lagos on the day of Halloween so we all dressed up.  I was Harry Potter because that’s super easy with what we wear as missionaries.

Oh, this week I got pelted with an orange.... I was just walking, then bam, someone threw an orange at me.  It was funny!! 

This week I learned a lot about prayer…it’s incredible how we have the power and opportunity to talk to God WHENEVER WE WANT!!!! I put a grand effort in my prayers this week and I really did see a difference. I am doing a "daily report" in my prayers so I report to God everything that has happened and what I could’ve done better and what help I need to accomplish my tasks. I see how the Lord is with me every step of the way every single day.  I also see that there are so many miracles! By praying with "real intent" we see how much the Lord really does bless us and how he has such a great love for us. 

I am heading to Lisbon now! Have a great week and pray for me that I can learn and serve and love!

-Elder Herrmann​