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​

10/30/17 - Creating a STAKE in Algarve

We are in Lagos today and will stay the night and do a division/split tomorrow. We are in an Indian store writing our emails so I don’t have a lot of time.  The weeks are flying by now! This week we did a lot of work focusing on building a stake here in the Algarve. It has been really tiring but very rewarding. We have had the opportunity to work with a lot of the missionaries which has been a really good experience! 

This week Cesar has fallen of the face of the earth so we have been looking for people! We hadn’t found anyone but we were always putting in our best effort and having faith.  Then on Saturday night while we were contacting people I was making some calls and this women from Mozambique named Tina, answered the phone and said that she and her family wanted to go to church! She and her two daughters made it to church! Also two young women from Brazil who are studying here decided to come to church because one has a boyfriend from the US who invited her to come! Her name is Angelica and she liked church a lot! So we had nothing this week and then poof--5 new people to teach in one day!!

Love the mission and all the things that I am learning here! One of the things that I am learning is that the Book of Mormon is an essential part of anyone in the Church’s testimony. If we don’t have a testimony of the BOM then we don’t have a testimony of Joseph Smith and the restoration...we need to do everything we can to gain a testimony of the Book of Mormon!!! 

A funny story, I was on a division with a Brazilian elder and we were contacting this girl who only spoke English. I thought, “Oh yes, I can use my English finally!” Man, it was so bad....I can’t speak English! I kept going back to Portuguese.  Then I tried translating Portuguese to English in my head and it didn’t make sense to her.  You know it was sad when my Brazilian comp tried to help with the English. 

Well thank you all for the prayers regarding our goal of creating a stake.  I’ve never worked so hard in my life and have a few grey hairs to show for it.  We had an attendance of 398...I couldn’t believe that we missed it by two people...2!!!! We have high hopes for next week so keep praying!

Wait, so President Tavares just called me and said that it was close enough so THEY SENT OFF THE OFFICIAL PAPERS to Church headquarters!! But we still have to have a good attendance for the month of November.

The gospel is true. 

-Elder Herrmann​

10/23/17 - Zone conference & investigators

This week was really good, we had zone conference which is always the best part of the transfer.  We learned a lot of things but the best part was when President Tavares spoke. He talked about what we need to do to become exalted, everyone was just in awe of the things he was teaching us. 

We have had some set backs....the family of Natalino has completely fallen off the grid and though we tried they wouldn’t set up a time to talk to us all week. Also, Cesar’s baptism fell through because of some family complications...we are just going with faith. But some good news is that we found some people to teach this week! We were knocking on doors and we found a guys named Nelson. Nelson is 26 years old and is actually American, born in the US and then when he was 10 years old he moved to Portugal because his parents are Portuguese. At first he let us in because he didn’t want to be rude but we could see that he didn’t have a lot of interest. After the first lesson you could see his countenance change. He told us, "when can you guys comeback?" We went back the next day and marked him for baptism…the progress towards baptism will probably go slow because he is living with his girlfriend but man, he could be a great leader in the church. While we are teaching him we see him gain more and more desire and interest! It’s so good to talk with him because he is a smart and self-reliant and could really help the church a lot in Portugal.  At the end of our last meeting when we said we needed to go, “He was like, "Wait, already?!" It just shows what the Spirit can do, it’s one of the most special things in the world to watch the Spirit change someone.

We are also teaching a women named Vitalina who we found street contacting. She is really friendly, about 60ish years old and interesting!  She owns a rehabilitation center in Faro and every time she see us she says, "Oh my little boys from God, come on in!" We are hopeful to see her progress! 

The highlight of the week was a meeting with the district presidency in Algarve.  They told us that we are so close to sending our papers into the headquarters of the church to become a stake! We need to do some specific things this week to be able to send in the papers.  We called all the missionaries in the zone who are super excited and ready to go and do!

In the Book of Mormon I am reading about the “Stripling Warriors”.  I love this story so much—their faith, their knowledge that God would deliver them, their absence of doubt!  And I love how God blessed them and preserved them—not one died! I am really working on increasing my faith everyday by doing the small and simple things with real intent! I believe and hope that God will bless our efforts with miracles!

The mission is just too good, I hope you guys have a great week!

-Elder Herrmann