Hey Mãe!
My new companion is Sister Stokes, she's not so new, since we're now going on week three together:). She's sweet. She's almost a year older than me, she's very pretty and she's from Henderson, Nevada.

Well, this week was good. It started out a little rough, but ended fabulously. We went to Linda Velha for Pday and we went to the Torre de Belém, a monastery, and the Monument to Discovery. It was all really cool and I took lots of cool pictures. Tuesday we had training and interviews with President. It was good. It's always good to learn to be a new missionary. Then we, on Wednesday, had the sister training leaders come and we did divisions and so I spent the day with Sister Gibbs, who came into the mission with me. She was great, and it was just what I needed. I'd been having kind of a rough time lately and I had just felt like I'd kind of lost Megan somewhere along the way, the fun spirited and hard working part. I was just tired and kind of ornery. But in the training with President we'd been given these new books that the church is now giving missionaries that talks about better adjusting to missionary life, and we were challenged to use it, and so I decided to do just that. I'd already read it all, because I'd borrowed it from the office with the office elders' permission a few weeks before, and so I decided to look in a part that I remembered reading about "rededicating yourself" to the Lord and so I decided to give it a whirl on Friday:). When I woke up on Saturday, I just found myself ready to have a great day, or at least to fake it. We ended up talking to LOTS of people and it just turned out great. Then I had more confidence for Sunday, so on Sunday, Sister Stokes and I taught our first lessons of the transfer that weren't just in the road lessons! We even had a member present for all of them! It was an absolutely fabulous day. We had two really cool experiences. The first one we had just taught a lesson at a house when a little girl that I had seen before came up and stood by us to stare at us. I'd talked to her before and given her one of our cards with Jesus' face. I asked her if she still had it and she said yes, that it was on the wall in her bedroom. Then we asked if we could talk to her mom, and she said she didn't live with her mom but with her aunt instead. We went with her, and the person who opened the door at her house was one of her cousins, who just happened to be a friend of the member's from school. Then the member invited her to an activity we're having (I'm going to teach the youth how to make brigadeiros in the microwave) and said she'd come and get her before so she could come to the activity also! Then afterward we taught a lesson with a man who had been taught in the past by the sisters named Guilherme. We were a little apprehensive because we read his record that we have from the last time he was taught. we got to the lesson, and he lots of questions. We didn't have answers for them, so
I told him that he just needed to pray and he would know that the church was true and if he knew that, then the rest wouldn't matter. He told us after that he had done that already but that he hadn't received an answer. So then I told him that I was the same way. I hadn't felt any warm feeling in my heart or anything fancy when I prayed to know it was true, but instead I had put it into practice and learned that it was true. So I promised him that if he put it into practice then he would know it was true. Then a member invited him to an activity about eternal marriage and I told him that he should go if he really wanted to know and come to church also. He said he didn't have time because of school (he's working on a masters in engineering), but I told him that if he really wanted to know, he had to do the work to find out. Then we left at that and we went to our apartment to get our jackets and a quick dinner. When I was making dinner I felt like I just needed to call him, and so I did. When I called him I told him that if he would act like a member, read his scriptures, pray, keep the commandments in the pamphlets (he'd had all the lessons the first time around, but had a ton of questions about each "rule" and so we just handed him all the pamphlets and told him to read them), and go to church, he would know that it was true. He said that he didn't have time, and I pointed out that it was just ten minutes of scripture reading, and two one minute prayers, and an hour of church, and he said he would do it. I know, with all my heart, that if he does what we told him to do (which is what the spirit told us to say), he will know it's true. It was a cool experience, to be able to promise something like that as a servant of the Lord and say it without a doubt. Afterward, we were on fire, and so we did 8 contacts in half an hour. It ended up being a really good day, and it was nice to have such a pick me up after two rough weeks:). All in all, it was a great week, I even finally got the recipe for microwave brigaderios. I made them for some of the ward, and they loved them. I was told a few times (this is hilarious that this what a Brazilian man considers to be something that you have to have in a woman) by a few of the Brazilian men that after the mission I am finally ready to get married haha. So the qualifications for marriage for Brazilians living in Portugal is to be able to make good brigadeiros haha:). We're also teaching a man named Arlindo, it's Jessica's grandpa. He's really great. He can't walk though because half of his body is paralyzed and so a family (the same family that pays for us to eat out) picks him up on Sundays. He says he knows the church is true and he wants to be baptized (we had a really powerful lesson with him about it) but he says that he won't be baptized until he can walk to church by himself. So, we'll just see what happens there. We're still teaching Andre, but he probably won't be baptized this week because we haven't been able to get into contact with him.
Well, I got to go, but I love you tons!
Love always,
Sister Wach