Hey Mommy!

Love the pictures, looks like it was really fun! Oh, and Tay is SUPER tall! Wow! That's cool that you got to see Sister Pinto, I just talked to her the other day. I told her to tell you I said hi! Haha. 

This week was good. A little bit crazy, but good. Monday, we went to Lisboa and we just kind of wandered around. Tuesday I don't even remember what we did. Then Wednesday we had divisions with the Sister Training Leaders. It went well. Sister Call and I took Manuel with us, and it was really cool for him. We found more people in those few hours than I have in any day in my whole mission! Manuel did some of the contacts just by himself and kept telling people he would call them or pass by to take them to church. He did great. We even ended up getting dinner because one of the doors we knocked gave us dinner! Manuel afterward was like "I was really hungry and I was praying and Heavenly Father answered my prayers!" He's awesome haha. Though, in one of the houses, Sister Call´s camera got stolen. She left her bag in another room with the son of a family and we went and saw their baby. Oops, later we realized it was gone. On Thursday we went and we got the camera back. Talk about a miracle! We weren't exactly sure how we were gonna do it, but we went to the apartment and we knocked and said we'd left something. We explained to the mother that we thought maybe the camera had "fallen out of S. Call´s bag." She got the hint and she called up the son on the phone and she chewed him out in Creole. Then she went and found it in his room. Sadly all the pictures were gone, but thankfully Sister Call had saved her pictures a few days before. We did her a favor and took some really great pictures of us getting ready for bed to replace the rest (hehe). Then on Saturday  I learned something really important. We worked really hard this week looking for new people and doing contacts, and just everything seemed to keep falling. We've also been trying to do activities to strengthen our ward and Miratejo, and almost no one comes. Then Saturday, our ward mission leader planned this big activity about how the members can help to teach and what they need to be doing, and only three people came. A recent convert from the other ward, and two older members from our ward who fell asleep. The recent convert talked about how no one was taking care of him and how he was going to go inactive, and one of the other members left. It was a disaster, and I just ended up sitting at the back of the chapel on the floor crying. All I could think about was just how hard working as a missionary is when the members don't want to help and I just thought, why are we even here. Why don't we just give up. It was Satan speaking but I couldn't help it, and we went out to keep working. We ended up finding a man whose mother had just died and we were able to teach him the 2nd lesson. The spirit was really strong and even if he doesn't progress, at least he knows that Heavenly Father has a plan for us. Then on Sunday S. Warner and I had the pleasure of going to watch 5 of the people she taught in her old area get baptized. That experience just changed the whole way I was feeling. The ward is SO strong and loving there. They just reached out in love toward the new members and the missionaries and the new family was SO happy. It's things like that in the mission that make me realize that there are people here in Portugal who really are ready for the gospel and will be loved and kept strong in the gospel. I regreted those feelings from the day before. It's interesting that one of the things that I think that I've learned the most in my mission is that Heavenly Father loves us and that when things like that happen that are hard, He will turn and show his love or show us that missionary work really is worth it. I'm really grateful that I'm here and that I have the opportunity to serve here in Portugal.

Also, two funny things happened. First off, someone called us "As Primas dos Élderes" or the cousins of the elders. No one knows who we are, so they always say weird stuff like that we're their wives or girlfriends or whatever, but that was the funniest one yet:). Then, at the baptism, I got called Branca de Neve (Snow White) like 4 times by 4 different people haha.

Love you tons! 

Love,

Sister Wach

 

http://www.lds.org/prophets-and-apostles/unto-all-the-world/unto-all-the-world-hastening-the-work-in-europe?cid=HPTU021814479&im=true&lang=eng

I just thought this was cool because at 3:02, you can see Sister and President Fluckiger! Sister Fluckiger is wearing green and you can just see President's hair haha.