Monday, October 6, 2014

Beach house; mission or vacation?

So I am safely in Portugal now!  My new area is called Costa de Caparica.  It is way cool becuase we live right on the beach.  Like literally in the morning we walk out the back yard and up onto the sand to run on the beach.  It is way cool and there is always tons of surfers and jelly fish.  We live in the bottom floor of a nice old ladys home.  She brings us some big old dish of food todos Domingos  which is awesome because she is is a really good cook.  So yeah we have a pretty cool place to live.  And it is just me and Elder Durfee in the house.

So yeah Elder Durfee is cool he is 6 foot 4 so we look kindof out of place here among the short people.  He is way cool and I like him so far.  Really helpful with the language.  He is going to go run track for Weber State when he gets back so I though that that was interesting and he does not walk slow I can tell you that much.

The trip over was fine.  I have never had a hard time sleeping in uncomfortable places and the plane proved to be no different.  I do still have the English BOM becuase I sat by a member on the first flight, missionaries on the second, and then in England I was just never very sucessful in picking people to talk to but it was fun.  Then I could not for the life of me talk to the Lady on the flight to Portugal becuase she does not speak any language that I know.

The language is tough.  Everyone slurrs their words talks really fast and it is always really quite too.  So quiet that I do not think that I would be able to understand them if they were speaking english.  But it is good becuase for the most part I just tell people hello, that I have been here for a couple days, and then testify about prophets.

Conference has been really interesting here.  We have spent almost all my time here trying to get everyone we can to go and watch it.  And when we have been sucessful and then have to watch it in portuguese that is quite the expericnce. It is not quite the same when you are listening to the prophets in a translation,  it is similar to their words but not quite the same becuase you cannot hear the passion and convition of their testimony in their own voices.  But when we were watching it with some investigators one of our investigators named Oswaldo was getting emotional so it was pretty cool.  Even though I really didnt know what they were saying it was still a really good time.

The country here is beautiful.  I love the old world Europe architecture. And the food that I have been able to try has been really good too.  We cook our lunch usually and do not really eat dinner.  So I havent have a lot of different food yet. Also I do not really know any recipies so I just give it my best trying to remember off of smell and look what goes good on chicken and stuff.  We have spent a lot of time teaching in an area called the Terras and Segundo Terra which means the lands and the second lands.  They are like little african communitites which look like total ghettos but inside of them they are acutally pretty nice in some cases.  The people are really cool and like talking about Jesus and are cool with saying they will do stuff, but they just do not follow through very well.  

I have not taken really hardly any pictures this far because I am been kindof scrambling with other things so sorry about that but I will try to do better next week.  We have gotten a lot of help from members already.  One of the members is named Geraldo.  He is this older guy that reminds me a lot of Garret Andrew.  It is pretty funny acutally.  He is always ready to help us out with whatever we need and he likes coming and teaching with us even if we are just knocking doors.  Also there is this little boy from the Terras that is Jesses age that was converted a couple years ago that helps us get in with his freinds which is cool.  We do a lot of walking on the cobblestones and on dirt.  I come home kindof tired and a little dirty most days.  The humidity is still going to take some getting used to.  I do not like always feeling sweaty and nothing drying very well but it is not too horrible.

We talked to one guy on the street that we stopped as a funeral procession was going by and talked to him about where we go after death.  He accepted everything that we had to say and then liked how we get baptised like Jesus was baptized as well.  He was baptised as a baby but always thought that that was strange because he had not done anyting wrong when at that point and did not have sins. Anyways it was cool to see how much our message makes sence to people that are willing to listen becuse it is simple and more true than anything else.  As long as we are willing to try to find out if it is right we can know becuase it is not that difficult.  It was nice to run into someone that wasent so set in thier ways that they are unwilling to experiment on the word. We have plans to see him and teach him again Wednesday. We also talked to an old lady that is catholic and she was telling us about the feelings that she gets in her when we are around.  We explained to her that that was the spirit and taught her how to pray.  She still prayed like a catholic with us and was telling us about how she is about to die be cremated and thrown in the ocean but its all good.  haha

So I may be tired and confused but I love it here and am having a good time.  It is very humbling and I am greatful for the help that I get and thank the Lord for all the broken portuguese that he has given me so far.  The church is true.  I know it and I am seeing though other people that it is not super difficult to know for yourself if you want to as well.  I am greatful to serve and realize that I am a very conservative driver compared to even the grannys here.  I love you all and miss you!

Love 
Elder Hobson

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