"Sou de Portland, Oregon" ????

P-day in Portugal - Packing,
Pizza, Package, Pop

First day with first greenie Elder Nielsen

Hey everybody!

OH MY GOODNESS.

OK, so President Terry said in the meeting before we went to meet the new missionaries that he was absolutely convinced that the Lord had prepared us and the new missionaries, and that who he had assigned us to train was what the Lord wanted. We went in to the training with the new missionaries to sit down, and I saw ELDER NIELSEN, who I knew was coming. Long story short, PORTLAND, OREGON is being very well represented here in Almada. I had seminary with him senior year. He's from the Bethany Ward, and Kaitlyn Morgan was in his ward, along with some other people we know. Unbelievable! I remember joking during the Christmas phone call that this would happen. The more I think about it, though, it blows my mind. The timing for me to leave the office and just the right time and get here and learn SO MUCH to get me ready to be who I need to be for the rest of eternity... I feel like I have started learning how to love during these last 7 weeks.

I have never worked with anybody who is brand new in the mission. I was already understanding and speaking a lot when I came into the mission, so I never really found out what it would be like to not have a single clue what somebody said when they opened their mouth. It's been cool to watch him double every day. He amazes me. I remember how chaotic and stressful my first week was for me, and I'm trying to keep focused and not try to relax too much, because this is serious business. But we're having great days every day so far, and the shock is starting to wear off, especially since today is P-Day, his chance to breathe a little and take care of everything that has been on his mind for the last week. And, like I was joking, I do still need to teach him how to make rice.

Irmã Mack is training Irmã Nkutxi (“ni-KOO-chee” from Angola, who is one of the first missionaries to leave the country of Angola. They're SO COOL. Our district is awesome. Elder Wilcox and Elder Bass are still our zone leaders.

Conference was INCREDIBLE. Every conference is the best conference yet. We watched Saturday AM in the chapel live at 5 PM Saturday evening. On Sunday we watched Priesthood at the chapel at 10 AM. We went and had lunch at Leonardo and Marina's house to watch Saturday PM, and it was in Portuguese but you could hear the English behind it. I understood the Portuguese. Then we went trying to round up our investigators to go to the Sunday AM at 5 PM, but it didn't end up working out. We had a meeting with our ward mission leader between sessions, and then stayed and watched the Sunday PM from 9 AM to 11 PM, going straight to bed when we got home. Genral Conference is like IKEA – No matter where you see it, you always feel like you're in the same place.

I decided to try to find the theme for this general conference, and in putting together all the talks, I came up with the following:

Commitment to sacred covenants to love and serve others by sacrifice is the only way to transform ourselves into the happy beings of eternal value we truly want to be.

I loved President Eyring's talk: “We must be transformed through making right choices where that is hard to do.”
and Elder Bednar's!!! It blew my mind. Elder Bednar seems to learn and understand things in a way very similar to the way I learn, so almost anything he says makes perfect sense to me.

But yeah, everything I learned is encapsulated in that one sentence theme. Condensing 10 hours of conference into one sentence gives one sentence the power of 10 hours to me. I read that sentence and I remember everything I heard understood. I highly recommend everybody to try a similar idea.

Anyway, we taught Silva's friend Edson this week, but Silva is moving to Miratejo. It will be good for him – he won't be living with his girlfriend anymore, he'll be closer to his family, and he'll be closer to the church. Also, we found another family this week to teach – it started with a woman, Natalia, whom we contacted on the street. We visited her house, found that her son had been taught two years ago but the missionaries got transferred and they lost contact with the elders. There was a death in the family, and they had a lot of questions for us. On the way out of the door, we felt that we should talk to a woman looking out of the window (we don't do it that often), and she turned out to be the sister of Natalia. Paula, who was baptized when I got here, has been working on Sundays, started smoking, and hasn't ever been home for us to talk to. But, we've been talking to Liliana, the girlfriend of her son, and she has discovered some curiosity. We went last night to talk to Paula, but there was a big neighborhood party in her house for the Porto vs. Manchester United game, so we asked if we could read something really quickly to give a kick to the party. Nobody really responded to the question, but Nuno (17) and Liliana (16) responded with a loud “EU OUÇO!” They decided it would be better to come the next night, so we're going over tonight.

I love you guys like crazy. Have a fun trip to Utah!

Amor para todos,

Elder Lobo