2/26/18 - STUDY the Scriptures

Well I am back here on my islands of the Azores right now for p-day and I love it! We will be doing the zone conference here tomorrow so we decided to come out early and see the island again! Man I have missed these islands so much; it’s great to be back for a couple of days. Today we were on the island of Terceira! One of the members named Frank who is a farmer took us around and it was a blast

This week was another good one! I love the mission and the experiences that I am gaining here. Every day I see the hand of the Lord more and more in my life. I also see the true happiness that this gospel brings. 

The work in our area is going well. Tiago is doing well and progressing but still hasn’t been to church. We taught Soraia this week and started teaching her brother Junior.  They are good but need to get over some trials.  I was on a split with some other elders and we were knocking on doors when we met Elena and Sandro and their son. It turns out Sandro was a missionary for our church 20 years ago and is less active and his wife and son never were baptized so we are working with them now!

Paula and Nilton will be baptized and married this week. I am so happy for them. I know that that they have had many trails but they have been patient these last 4 months and now will enjoy the fullness of the gospel. They really are such a special family. They are such great examples to me and I am so excited for them!!

This week we did almost all of our zone conferences throughout the mission. They went really well and I have been doing my training sessions on weekly planning and I feel like it is going great! By the end of every conference we are dead tired with a headache. Haha! But it’s always a blast seeing all the missionaries with their excitement. I saw Sister Madsen this week which is always fun. 

My favorite part of every conference is the message from President Tavares. He took a story out of Judges 6 and 7 where Gideon is trying to free his people. In the beginning he had 32000 warriors at his command but the Lord wanted to show them that it was him (God) who will deliver them. So he told Gideon to tell the warriors it’ll be a hard battle but he doesn’t want anyone that isn’t 100% in, and if you aren’t you need to leave. Right there 22,000 or 2/3 of their armies left saying basically "nah I’m good, I don’t want to die, I want to chill." So then there were 10,000 courageous and obedient and righteous warriors. But the Lord still wanted to test the ones who are the most ready and willing and obedient. So he told Gideon to let his army of 10,000 to drink from the river. 9,700 drank the water like dogs putting both knees on the ground and putting their heads in the river. While 300 were still looking for the possible attack from the enemy, drinking the water more with caution.  Because of the small difference Gideon sent home the 9,700 warriors and went on with only 300 of them against and army innumerable. But they were obedient and Gideon said “do what I do.” They went to the walls during the night and they all yelled the same thing at the same time and broke a vase... the sound was so loud and terrible the huge enemy army got scared and started running away and the 300 warriors killed them and took back Israel from huge army!

I love this story because it’s like the 300 Spartans but a cooler version (because they won.)  But also I like it because of the symbolism. God will help us get through our trials when we are obedient to our leaders and have courage. Afterward I was talking a little bit with President Tavares. We talked about how this story represents the 3 kingdoms of glory in the plan of salvation.  22,000 (or most) are not willing to sacrifice or be courageous and will go home (telestial). 9,700 are good and courageous but they are still lacking the little things and are not “all in” (terrestrial).  Then there are the 300 who are the obedient and righteous who give their all, not doubting (celestial). These 3 groups, I believe, symbolize our church members.   If we want exaltation, we need to give it our all to be in the 300 group.

I am gaining such a deep love for the scriptures-- they are SO USEFUL! (If only I would’ve known that before my mission ;)) They really do change people and influence our decisions and lives.  I hope we all will really commit to "STUDYING" (yes studying, not reading) the scriptures every day.  I know we will be blessed for doing so.  

Yesterday I had my usual luck of getting patted down at the airport for the 3rd time on my mission.  Somehow, we missionaries must look really dangerous. Haha!  

I am having the time of my life.  I have never felt this way before.  I know it’s all true.... and I owe it all to God and the Savior! 

Love you all!

Elder Herrmann

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2/19/18 - "Cavalo"

This week was really good as we had the whole week to work in our area! To make the best use of our time we did divisions with the zone leaders every night. We definitely saw the Lord work some miracles while we were working, one of them being a teenage girl named Soraia. She is Portuguese but her parents are from Cape Verde, she is 17 years old and super outgoing. She decided to come to church with us on Sunday and she loved it. In the class for the teenagers they were talking about going to the temple in a month and she leaned over and said, “Hey, can I go to the temple?” It was a little awkward because I had to tell her that first you have to be baptized.  Then she said, “Okay let’s talk about that.” So we'll keep teaching her this week and hopefully she can progress towards a baptism date. Also, I think the biggest miracle was when we went to talk to Nilton and Paula. We were expecting that the marriage papers would take about 30 days to get to Portugal, but when we saw them they were super excited and said that they had a surprise for us. She then told us that the documents had already arrived in only 6 days’ time. They are getting married on the 27th of February and the following Saturday they will be baptized! They are super excited to be baptized and during church they were talking to all the members inviting them to the wedding and baptism. It really has been such a great blessing in my life to know Nilton and Paula, I know they're going to stay strong in the church and will help a lot of people's lives.

During the divisions we saw Tiago and he finally let us come in the house. Day by day we help him improve, we actually got him to walk outside and do a little exercise. We did a service project to clean his house but unfortunately, he still needs to overcome his fears about going to church. We're just going to continue working with him little by little and hopefully he’ll overcome this adversity. 

Even though I’ve been in the mission for over a year-and-a-half now, there are still lots of little funny stories about grammar in Portuguese. We went to give a blessing to a less active member, and like any typical person here in Portugal she had like seven names and names that were really hard to pronounce. So we decide that we were going to write out the names but she said, “No, no, no, I'll do it.” But the problem was she was really really old and her handwriting was so bad that it wasn't legible. So what she wrote was "Carvalho", but I thought it said "Cavalo" which means “horse”.  So in the beginning of the blessing I called her a horse! Hahah! So the temporal thing I learned this week was that you definitely need to write out the name yourself when you're going to give a blessing to someone you don't know.

The spiritual thing I learned this week would have to be the importance of the temple. I was studying about Jesus Christ when I found an interesting verse in Isaiah 4:2 that says "In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel." So what does it mean to be escaped of Israel? It means the survivors that escape the judgement of God and are cleansed....but how? How can we escape? Only through the temple can we completely escape the "world". I see how hard it is for people not having a temple nearby and have felt in my own life missing the temple. I regret so much not going to the temple as often as I could have.... I know that when we frequently attend the temple we will be blessed and really "escape the world". When we go to the temple we are on the right hand of the Lord. When I get back home I’m going to get a "season pass" to the temple!  

We were in the Algarve today because zone conferences are starting up. I will be giving a training on how to plan daily and weekly. Pray for me!

- Elder Herrmann

2/12/17 - We have not sinned tomorrow...

This week went by really fast because 90% of the time we were on the road!! We had 2 workshops scheduled for everyday this week! We started in the Algarve and made our way up to Lisbon one day at a time. So after p-day we went to Milena and Sirlei’s house in Faro (members I knew from serving there).  We were both super excited to see each other! They also invited Angleica and Letíca, my recent converts in that area. Our dinner consisted of laughs, jokes and games, nothing changes! A large part of my heart belongs to the people there. Man Angelica and Leticia are doing so well! They have such a passion for the gospel!!! Angelica sent me a text this week saying, "I went to the temple in Spain last Friday and was baptized for my great grandparents. I made the last session of baptisms with a group from Faro.  Everything was SUPER WHITE and everyone was super nice and they helped me understand a lot of things. When I was baptized for my great grandma I could really feel a "thank you" from her, I could feel her feeling of thankfulness. I never met her but I am so happy to help her enter this path." WHATTTTT like wow!!! These two 22 year olds are the only members in their families and with everyone they know in Brazil, how did I get so lucky to meet and teach them the gospel? To see the progress of your recent converts is the best feeling in the world. They will return to Brazil after college at the end of this year. Letica and her mom live in Rio de Janeiro.  Seeing them and seeing their progress was a highlight this week!

We had workshops the next day, and I taught a workshop to Sister Madsen's area! She was a great friend growing up and lived just around the corner from me my whole life. And we were able to talk in a different language! How cool is that! She is doing great--picking up Portuguese fast and excited for the work! It was good to see her.

The rest of the week was just 2 workshops every day. In one of the workshops I was talking to some Elders about one of their investigators who was moving back to Cape Verde and was ready to be baptized. The Elders had done a great job teaching her but lacked boldness to get her baptized. So we talked and decided to go back to their area right after the meeting and fill up the font with water. We met with her and the Spirit touched her heart. We brought her to the church and had her baptism that very moment. It just showed me that Christ is calling us to follow him NOW. Not tomorrow but NOW! And if we give our faith and sense of urgency to follow Christ--he will work miracles through us.

In our area as far as the work goes, nothing really new happened. Tiago is running from us, but Jennifer and Nilton and Paula’s family went to church. Their papers are in the last stage and require a 25 day wait.  Then it’s marriage and baptism time! 

We had a stake conference and it went super well. Elder Karl D. Hirst, General Authority Seventy from England, came and spoke. He was really inspiring and talked about the sacrifice of Christ and how we can go below his suffering. And the reassurance of knowing that our savior LIVES! He lives today and is always helping us.  One line he said that I loved was, “We have not sinned tomorrow…tomorrow is always a new day to improve and come unto Christ.”

 The mission is great. Wouldn't trade it for anything. 

-Elder Herrmann

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2/5/18 - Loving this!

Man, I love my mission! I love Portugal!  I love the people!  I love the work!  I love the Lord!

This week (the first week of the transfers) is always super busy --picking up new missionaries and having dinner with them; training the trainers, and the new missionaries; leadership council meeting; work in our own area, etc. I’m just happy I survived this week again haha. 

Okay so first off... NEW MISSIONARIES ! We had a mixed group 6 from the states and 6 from Brazil in 4 different groups. So, a lot of our time this week was in the airport with President and Sister Tavares. We finally got all the missionaries together and brought them to the mission home. There we had the famous "lasagna meal" and talked to all of them. They are a really good group with alot of excitement! The next morning we took them to the mission office and did training for them and their trainers. Elder Galland who is only 6 months out on the mission, and has been living in the same house with us his whole mission, will train a new missionary! It’s been a fun experience. We talked to the missionaries about how being united is sooo important! 

Then the next day we had leadership missionary council meeting, where we talked about being constant in the work and getting either the same results, or new successful results.  The message of President Tavares was really good.  He talked about the life of Job and how through his obedience and staying firm in the faith he got blessed two fold. Actually, something very interesting he shared with us is in the last chapter of Job.  There it talks about all the animals and possessions that Job received two-fold, after being obedient, so everything was doubled except his children. In the beginning, he had 10 children. They all died and then in the end he had 10 again.  Why not 20? It’s because we believe in eternal families and that the first 10 were never lost, because he will be with them again. So when he received just 10 more, it’s actually being doubled!  I thought that was really cool because we are the only church that understands that scripture.  We are the true church!  He also talked about how REAL success as a missionary is being obedient and having that change in us… we can baptize a lot of people but not have that change and it’ll be empty success.  

This week in the field we got a lot done. We are teaching this man named Tiago from Brazil. He was a referral and we entered his house and we see this man with this big beard sitting in front of a television, rolling his own cigarettes and just in a very dirty, sketchy situation. He is SOOOO funny! He’s addicted to probably everything you can think of, especially smoking -- he smokes 30 cigs a day. But he told us that he wants to be purified and change his life around. He is a real jokester, and hasn’t left his home for a long time. Usually, as missionaries, we meet people like these that basically won’t progress so we move on from them.  But something about Tiago just makes us see him differently.  I feel like we are seeing him the way the Lord would see him. We are helping him to not drink alcohol and coffee.  We got him to shave his beard and have plans to get him out and about. It’s a slow process but we’ve seen great progress. We are also teaching Jennifer, Nazarè, and Shaquelle and good family that works on Sunday but we are trying to help them go to church. 

Nilton and Paula are working really hard on getting their marriage papers ready.  It’ll take about 30 more days but man they are so converted. They haven’t missed one time since they started coming in November.  Really, they are such a great example to me and make me so happy. They might not have many earthly things, but they have the gospel and family and personally, they look happier than most of the people I know -- it goes to show you what’s really important. 

Nelson, Paula, Lukenia, Palmoa, Beckam, and Jasmin returned to Angola today. At church they said goodbye to all of the people there and it was super sad. In the short time they’ve been members, they have been a huge part of the ward.  We went over to their house after and the Bishop gave them priesthood blessings and we said our goodbyes... it was hard L  Paula (the mom) was trying hard not to cry.  Beckham came up to me and said “how do you say the name of the church in English?" I asked why... he responded "I will go to serve a mission in the USA so I will need to know." Haha I love him. Also, Lukenia who is 20, talked about going on a mission.  We are going to keep in contact so that in a year she’ll join god’s army! They told us they’ll visit Utah in couple of years too so I’m way excited. Also, they said we need to go to Angola....who’s with me? Haha!

We are currently in the beautiful Algarve coast right now and will do workshops all week. It’s going to be a great experience this week seeing all the missionaries. 

Today for pday we did paintball in the Algarve and it was awesome! I’m out! Love you all!

 -Elder Herrmann