VINTE ANINHOS!!!

Scary haircut!!! Is that the elder with the lump?

Waiting at the bank FOREVER!

Twenty!!!

HEY EVERYBODY

HOLY GOODNESS LOOK WHAT DAY IT IS

Wow.

This is officially a Special Edition letter home because of how incredible you all are.

Thanks for sending awesome pictures and cool stories.

Thanks for letting me know about Annamaria – I couldn’t believe it when I read it. I thought it was about some other Annamaria that I hadn’t met or something like that. O tempo realmente passa a voar. [Celso's cousin died suddenly on Sunday.]

Thanks for the Olympic report – we found out about Nelson Evora from some members during a family night, and apparently Portugal has only gotten four gold medals in the last hundred years or so.

Thanks for the birthday money!

Thanks for the package (It hasn’t come yet, but não faz mal)!!

So this last week was pretty crazy. I won’t spend too much time because the vast majority was just office stuff, but on Thursday, a beloved Elder of ours called in to get a doctor’s appointment. So he came in –

WARNING: Disgusting.

– with a giant golf-ball sized lump on his neck. Apparently he had gotten an ingrown hair of some kind that went way out of hand. The Exec Secs took him to the doctor in Parque in Lisbon (right by Marques de Pombal, the giant roundabout) and were there until the mid afternoon. The doctor worked on him for a little while and then informed him that he would need surgery in the afternoon.

President was in Germany at the time, so we were all scrambling around trying to get authorization from somebody, so we had Dr. Taylor (the Europe West Doctor) send over some forms authorizing the surgery.

I ended up calling his mom to let her know what was going on. It was pretty funny.

Anyway, so we spent most of our day chauffeuring the two elders around from appointments to this and that and then to the Benfica train station to go home. They were officially my first ride given to any elders. I guess that’s some kind of milestone.

Yuck. (End of disgustingness.)

Backtracking to Tuesday night, though, I was on the computer doing some emails and reimbursements, and all of a sudden a new email alert popped up in the bottom corner with FLIGHT PLANS FOR ELDER BALDWIN. I was pretty crushed. His back has been causing him all kinds of trouble, and physical therapy fixes it in one part only to send it to another. The next day, Elder Croshaw and I went to Odivelas to approve a new rental. At the time, though, Elder Baldwin was on a division there, so he told me what was going on. His zone had just had interviews with President on Monday. President apparently had told the doctors about what was going on and they were going to get back to him with what they were going to do. Apparently, Elder Baldwin’s parents found out Tuesday morning (Tuesday night here, when we got the flight plans) and sent him some emails about how they were so excited for him, etc. Elder Baldwin, on P-Day, read these emails and was completely confused – he hadn’t been told yet. So he called President, who didn’t know either. So Elder Baldwin will be home in Kaysville next week. CRAZY.

It’s a typical example of how we find out about things in the office. It’s pretty crazy.

I’ve been driving the whole week.

What else.

DISCURSO! DISCURSO! DISCURSO!

Ok, ok. So with birthdays and everything, I studied this morning the need to be born again. And I realized something that makes a lot of sense to me. If you look at the world from a worldly perspective, you would arrive at the worldly conclusion that living for a long time or a short time or for a fun time or a boring time or whatever wouldn’t matter because, according to this perspective, it would all end at death. Basically, though, with living in the world and being subject to physical AND spiritual death, we are basically dead anyway, but our “time has been prolonged” (as said in 2 Nephi 2:21). So basically, we are dead because of the world, but can be born again through Christ – and not through the world. THE GOSPEL IS SO COOL.

Carla was in church on Sunday! She called us on Saturday as well and said she wanted to know how to pay tithing!!! CRAZY. She is SO ready, except for the whole not being married to the dude she’s living with.

Today for P-Day, we’re going to Chimarrão in Monsanto (the big forest-looking place in just south of Benfica) to have CHURRASCO. After that, we’re going to play tennis with Joãozinho, this incredible 13-year-old kid in our ward who plays soccer in the Sporting Club (even though he is a diehard Benfiquista). He’s so cool.

Oh yeah – a quick shoutout to everybody who wrote stuff for the INCREDIBLE book that Allie put together for me. OHMYGOODNESS. I don’t have it in front of me right now, otherwise I would go through and thank you all. I will be sure to write back.

Irmã Miquelina is making a cake tonight, and she gave me an escudo coin from 1966 with the Ponte 25 de Abril.

SO COOL

TCHAU TCHAU AMO TODOS VOCÊS

ELDER LOBO