Well we had transfers this week and Elder Thomas headed on over to the
other island! But I will be staying here with my new comp. Elder
McGraw. He was also trained in the mission by Elder Durfee and he is
really cool and I am really looking forward to serving with him. He
will be flying in later today. Which that has been a big confusion.
I thought that he was supposed to come in last night when we dropped
off Elder Thomas at the airport, but we waited for a bit and then
found out that he would be coming in today and I was to spend the
night with the elders in Praia. So I just have my phone keys and
camera with me. Living the good responsibility free life for a day
which is kind of fun but annoying that I didn't have reading or
writing material. But anyways so now we are out here in Praia just
waiting on our comps to come in. One elder that is coming into the
district is from Burley and I remember rooting against him in
basketball as Matt guarded him.
But where I need to get to is the bigger changes I guess. We had a
change in our branch presidency with Elder LeSueur leaving the spot
open in the district presidency and the representative of the district
here on the island, and with elder Broderick getting here. We now
have Elder Broderick as the branch president here and I am his 1st
councilor. So it is a little sad for me to not get to work with
President Cabral quite as closely but it will be a good change for the
branch to see how a presiding authority should work since they have
only really ever had a couple rough situations and missionaries as the
branch president here we plan to use this to train up a bunch of
younger members so that they can when it is their time step up and run
the branch properly. But I am super excited about all the
opportunities that we are seeing here.
There is a scouting program in Portugal and it is actually really
strong here, but you are required to be a Catholic.
We would like to get some programs established, at least the youth
should be getting taught the correct curriculum and have regular
mutual and things. We actually do have a addiction recovery group
that we recently established so that I guess counts as one program but
there is no planning or anything going into that on the branch level
as it is a district thing. Also it is the Brodericks that have the
blog. castingournets or something like that. I will be working to
get into much better shape as well before I come home. I am taking
sugar and carbs out of my diet and lets see where that gets me haha.
So Yesterday we did have a baptism and Fátima ponte was baptised
according to plan. She is so awesome. She passed through some trails
this week for sure. She had to have a special meeting with Elder
LeSueur and Elder Broderick because she still has her ex-husband
living in the same house as her, so it needed to be verified by the
district to make sure that she was truly living the law of chastity
before she was allowed to continue towards baptism. She also had a
major struggle with Tithing because she is the provider of the family
as the only one that works and she is supporting an ex-husband, and
two sons 27 and 20 years old. It is really sad that they are such
bums that they are just mouching off of their sweet quiet mother. But
eventually after teaching and testifying to her a lot about the
blessings of tithing we prayed with her in the lesson and she came up
afterward, there were no distractions for us that day besides the fact
that my comp and I were completely drenched from walking around in the
rain all day, and immediately she just accepted the invitation to live
it because she knew that the law came from God. She still struggled
with it more after that but she loved her baptism service and felt
super well loved by the whole branch. Unfortunately we have not been
able to involve too many people in teaching here because some members,
particularly the ones that are going to be her peers, have a tendency
to try and slow down the process of baptism here so we decided that it
would be best to get here in the water and then strengthen her as best
as possible, we already have several family nights planned for her
this week.
Anyways I am now with my new comp. He is really awesome so far and he
is a cross country runner that is 21. So finally for the first time
since my very first comp. i actually have someone that will run with
me and not have to force or beg them. I am looking forward to a fresh
start here in the area.
Com amor eterno
Elder Hobson
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