Photos this week

Irmao Rozendo, one of my favorite people
in the whole wide world

Cutting up RIBS!

PAI DAY ON SUNDAY

View from Palacio de Seteais

Palacio de Monserrate

Hey everybody

It's ALEXANDER'S BIRTHDAY TODAY!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALEXANDER!!! You're almost double digits!

I got a letter from Brother Larimer yesterday and it's Christian Larimer's birthday, too! He was the best hangman player I've ever seen.

AND it's Father's Day this Sunday. Pai Day! Happy Father's Day, PAI!

Well, I'm attaching pictures from our trip to Sintra with António Fragoso last week. It was fantástico!

I really have no idea what I want to write about this week. There really hasn't been anything too extraordinary going on.

In an effort to not go so crazy and develop a little bit of patience, I decided to give the whole “art” thing a try. I bought some dry pastels a couple weeks ago, and those are pretty fun but aren't quite what I had in mind. I bought some oil pastels, which I really like, but it feels too much like I'm “coloring”, so I'm moving to different things. I'm dipping my toes into the world of paint, and I bought some tempera paints because they were cheap, but they're kindof a joke, so if anybody has some kind of expertise (ARIANA), I would appreciate some thoughts on the subject.

Valdino is doing just about as great as always. We made him a deal that if he didn't have work on Sunday we would come make breakfast at his house to get “despertado” (woken up) and psyched up for church. Within the last couple weeks, I've felt it's ridiculous to try to have what I see as a “professional” relationship with investigators. Reading and watching videos about Preach My Gospel makes it sound like investigators are machines and missionaries are machines, and you just have to get the right gear ratio or octane level and then people will suddenly do anything you tell them to do. But that's not the case.

The other people we're working with haven't been home, so there's not really much to talk about there.

I love you guys a ton

Beijos

Elder Lobo

X-Files

Hey everybody--

Sorry for the delay -- Yesterday was a holiday and our internet place was closed, it didn't work out to do email yesterday so here we are today.

We went to Sintra with António Fragoso to see Palacio de Monserrate (SO COOL). It was so unbelievably awesome.

We started teaching a young couple -- friends of Valdino -- and they are absolutely awesome. Wagner (Brazilian, plays guitar and sings for a living) and Patricia (Portuguese, nicest person I've ever met). We met them at Valdino's house and offered to teach them English. When we were teaching Valdino again, they showed up at his house again, and they had a bunch of questions and we taught the Plan of Salvation that we had colored and cut out with Valdino. We just taught them English and about the Restoration really quickly. Patricia asked something along the lines of, "so can you guys do my baptism or does it have to be somebody else?" She has absolutely incredible questions!!!

Anyway, things are well. It's been reallllly hard for me lately, but I just have to not worry so much. Even with tons of really good things happening it's somehow been really hard for me to maintain a positive attitude about my own efforts, and that affects everything I do and feel. It's not that I'm not focusing enough -- it's that I'm focusing too much. I guess that's why we have life to figure this kind of stuff out.

Beijos

Elder Lobo

Pasteis de Belem
Trainers and Trainees

Elders Kearl, me, Velasquez, and Walker
That's not how you treat my Oregon!!

HEY EVERYBODY

Thanks for the pictures and letting me know how everybody is doing!

I don't know what it is about the mission that does this, but you can go from the highest high one day to the lowest low the next, and then the next day things are low but you are high, and the day after things are high but you are low... It's insane.

I'm not exactly sure what I should choose to write about, but I think I should write about something I learned and how it has benefited the people we work with.

The recent CES Fireside where Elder Bednar talked about how Satan tries to get us to misuse or minimize the importance of our bodies has had a huge impact on our work. We realized that being a missionary of words isn't as great as we could be. For example, why just talk about the Plan of Salvation when you could have something interactive and tangible?

So we took some colored paper and markers to António Armada (recent convert) and Valdino (investigator) and we cut out and made the Plan of Salvation. We then reviewed what would happen to somebody's body and spirit from start to finish. By the end, they could explain everything exactly as it is. It was incredible, especially since both of them have had the Plan of Salvation “explained” several times, but could never explain it correctly without help.

I want to talk about the way Elder Bednar used the definition of truth: “things as they REALLY ARE and things as they REALLY WILL BE.”

Satan tries to get us immersed into a world of things “as they really are not”. Usually we think about that as the way he highlighted: false representations of reality. These are usually fantasy worlds or tools that are numbing and senseless.

But I wanted to talk about some counterfeits of reality that are traps I have experienced firsthand:

Things as they really MIGHT be
Things as they really COULD be
Things as they really SHOULD be
Things as they really WOULD be
Things as they really SHOULD HAVE BEEN

These do not fit anywhere into the definition of truth or reality as defined in Doctrine and Covenants by the Savior. Why are we so concerned about things as they really AREN'T or WON'T be? In the ways we think about the past, do we forget about reality?

Thinking in these ways won't produce results in reality because they themselves are not real!

I hope that my life can be some form of an example for people. Elder Baldwin taught me an alternative definition of the word “example”: instead of being something to try to pattern, an example can also be something we try not to repeat. For example, “don't make me make an example out of you!” Because of Elder Baldwin, I don't use a proselyting bag because I don't want to mess up my back and go home.

Thinking in the abstract is cool, but in the end, it's pretty much worthless. It's the same reason that “deep doctrine” does nothing for anybody.

How much of what we do now could be saved for the Spirit World when we don't have a body? How could we more appropriately take advantage of the mortal life in which we find ourselves?

What kinds of hobbies could we tune up or do away with to embrace the REAL reality in which we really live and breathe?

Enough words.

But like Elder Russell M Nelson said in conference, the three most meaningful words are:

I LOVE YOU.

Elder Lobo