Iguaria

Portuguese doors are weird!

District Meeting

Bom dia, queridos!

Thanks for the emails and the updates, once again. You guys are troopers.

A lot of stuff has been happening these last few weeks. It’s comparable to the feeling of when the “early-bloomer” bully in kindergarten has just grabbed you by the ankles so he can pick you up and shake the lunch money out of your pockets. Transfers are next week, I’m 99.9999% sure I’m leaving, Elder Barrett will be the big bad financial secretary of the mission, investigators are progressing, Elder Bednar is coming (we just got a HUGE email from President about what we should and shouldn’t do with him here), some dear missionaries are about to finish their missions, leadership is changing, whatever. Either way, it’s the similar feeling I get during those two weeks before finals, when the water recedes prior to the tsunami.

Not a whole lot of huge reportable news happened this week. It was the week of birthdays, though. I never expected I would participate in celebrating a 27-year-old British woman’s birthday (Irmã West). She got a lot of post.

I’ve been spending a lot of my time in the office “testing” Elder Barrett. Basically, I have made him do everything and have spent a lot of time writing the training manual and reviewing his work. He’ll do great, I’m sure. I’ve spent a lot of time reading and pondering about things while I have this peaceful kind of employment. It’s really funny how simple our job is. I’ve worked a lot to cut the unnecessary busywork. There was a lot of work similar to what I did while cleaning up the poo flood (while walking forward, I would scrub in front of me, but when I got to the wall and turned around I would have to clean up my own footprints. Why not just walk backwards?).

We took President’s car back to the dealership to get serviced because the backdoor wasn’t latching. A MALA NÃO FECHA!

SATURDAY. Ariana would be so proud of me. We had a ward activity organized, set up, etc by the missionaries (party planning is part of Chapter 14 of Preach My Gospel). Anyway, it was called O CONCURSO DE SOBREMESAS. Basically a dessert party/contest. We watched Finding Happiness, a 5-minute missionary movie that is absolutely INCREDIBLE, and talked about it. What is the purpose of life? To have joy. But you don’t want Chinese store joy that breaks at the smallest bump or jiggle. You want quality with a guarantee. It’s like buying a car. You have to do a bunch of things to keep the warranty, but no matter what happens, if you do what you’re supposed to do, it’s covered by the warranty. THAT IS THE GOSPEL. Except it’s not 1 year/30,000 km. ANYWAY. For this activity, we decided we needed to ensure a good minimum level of entertainment. SO we decided to mix up the NUKER BROWNIE (that Ariana sent), with some slight modifications. We used milk instead of water and added chocolate chips. “VENHAM TODOS COMER O BOLO MAIS RÁPIDO DO MUNDO!” We had the microwave in there and nuked them on demand and then popped them onto the people’s plates. We put a little batter in plastic cups and they each took only 20 seconds to microwave. It was really good. People were BLOWN AWAY. Willian even started advertising for us calling it “O Bolo do Guinness”. People were pretty skeptical, but they changed their minds after they saw it pop out in its chocolatey goodness.

We had a really great lesson with Irisvaldo that I want to mention. We read the conference talk “The Way”, which is absolutely INCREDIBLE. If you could summarize every single church doctrine into one talk, it would be that one.

We did the rock/jello family night lesson with the Rau kids, since their parents were gone. It was really cool. It doesn’t matter how great and wonderful your house is if its foundation pops out of the jello cup when it gets squeezed.

Anyway, onto the news I know everybody is waiting for: TRANSFERS.
Yes, transfers are next Thursday.

Transfer meeting (Subway Tuesday) was yesterday, but it ended up not being Subway Tuesday. We went to the Subway in Chiado, like always, but found it closed less than two weeks ago and a chique café had taken its place. So we went to the one in Baixa, but found it had been taken over by the same café. ALL THE SUBWAYS CLOSED IN PORTUGAL. So we went and got sandwiches instead from Pans & Company, which came with some really good salads. But President wants to do CHILIS next transfer.

But I will likely be in ALMADA, which is situated across the river. It’s not final until next Monday (or Thursday morning if you’re Elder Barrett, who was told on transfer day while waiting in the office to go to the Algarve), so I’ll send you the address for all mail next week when I know for sure. It’s pretty funny. I’ll be able to see both of my previous areas from there, and all of my areas will have started with A’s. The only two left that start with A are Angra and Alvalade. Angra is in the AZORES (A again), so hopefully I can keep this up.

I’m really excited. The office has been a huge growing experience for me, as tough and exhausting as it has been sometimes. But I made it! I can’t believe it. If the last 8 transfers of my mission go as fast as the first 8, I won’t know what to do with myself when they throw me off the plane.

By the way, we get a new mission president in July.

I also want to clarify one thing: As far as plans go for when I get home, I feel that I need to try to get back right into the swing of things when I get home (no sitting around. Period.). This means that I’m going to try to get home in time for school. Extending is only an option for sister missionaries. On my deferment, I said that I would be back for Winter 2010, and that’s my plan. If the Lord is fine with that, then so am I. Moral of the story: I don’t want to worry about all of this right now, but this is the plan I have, I feel good about it, and I want to make it clear.

I love you all so much. I don’t feel like I’ve said that as much as I should’ve. As much as I may try to claim otherwise, there is nothing more valuable to me than you. As much as the world sucks me in sometimes, I always come back to you guys. There’s nothing the world could offer me that could take your place. Mom, as much as I always claimed to hate Josh Groban, I must confess that I really liked his “February Song,” and I still remember the words. Seeing that it actually is February, I would say it would be healthy to give it a good listen once or twice. I love you guys.

Just remember, it’s easy to slide a toothpick foundation into Jello but hard to drill anchor holes into a rock. Matthew 7:24-27. Investment in your eternal future has a good interest rate.

Elder Lobo