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
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