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I’m really feeling super uninspired to write this email right now. Seeing it will be the last email I send home, I will try to bare through my lack of desire and write about our week.

This week had its up’s and down’s. We were able to baptize 6 people yesterday! So, that was definitely an up. The people we baptized were: Cristina, Eliana, Hélio, Inês, Elizário, and Ivanildo. I will give a brief story about each of them.

Cristina is the mom of Gilmar and Gerhard (who were both baptized recently). She was supposed to be baptized last week with her son Gerhard, but she got scared and backed out. However, this week we worked hard with her and helped her feel better. What really helped her feel better was teaching her about the Plan of Salvation and helping her apply it to her life. She is a great woman. It was cool as well, because now the whole family has been baptized :) she called me the night before the baptism and told me that I was going to be her “padrinho”- godfather- (it’s a catholic thing) because she had decided that she wanted me to baptize her. It was pretty funny. She was super happy after the baptism :)

Eliana is the sister of Jussara, Mário, and Mila who were all baptized about 6 months ago. She also wanted to be baptized with them, but she was only 7 at the time. She had just turned 8 a few weeks ago, so we began teaching her. One of the first things she said to us was, “Elders I turned 8, NOW can I be baptized?” At first her parents didn’t want to let her, but they were finally softened and allowed her to be. She was super happy as well. :)

Hélio is a friend of a recent convert named Wilson. We had prayed earlier in the week, and we had felt his name. We went over there and talked to him about baptism. He had been to church in the past and everything, he just kind of wandered off the radar. He said that he wanted to be baptized, and his parents were also all for it. He was supposed to be baptized with his brother, Ely, but his brother decided he wasn’t ready. We will try to help him so he can be baptized this week. Hélio is an awesome kid though. He brought his friend, Milton, to church and his baptism. Milton now wants to be baptized this week.

Inês is quite a cool story. Inês is the niece of one of a recent convert named Paula. When we first started talking to her she had told us that she didn’t believe in God or anything. She came to the baptism with us, and that’s when she started to change. We began teaching her, and each time you could see Heavenly Father bringing more light into her. She came to church, and loved it. We taught and taught. She had tons of doubts. But when she prayed and read she felt the Spirit super strong. She was kind of freaked out at first by the feelings she was having. She tried to play it off that she was just thinking things, but the Spirit was talking to her. But after time, she realized it was Heavenly Father. Inês went from not believing in Heavenly Father, and thinking Jesus Christ was just a story people liked to tell… to having a super strong testimony of the gospel, and even giving the closing prayer in the baptism yesterday. This change happened in a matter of 3 weeks. I have never seen such a drastic change in such a short period of time. She was super happy. Inês had an incredible change. We love her so much!

Elizário and Ivanildo are friends of Gilmar and Gerhard. We found them as we were teaching Gilmar and Gerhard. They quickly expressed their interest in being baptized. We marked their baptism in the very first lesson we taught to them. It was pretty cool! They began coming to church, and preparing for baptism. They had no problems and all. They are super cool kids! They are both from Guinea Bissau and have been here for about 3 years. Elizário is 18, and Ivanildo is 21. Their brother, Junior, is going to be baptized this weekend. Their mom and their step dad are also wanting to be baptized. Their cousin also wants to be baptized. It’s awesome when this happens. Through one person, you can find many more.

The down side for the week. A few weeks ago we baptized Kayla, Stefanya, and Diogo. Their mom, Teresa, was also marked to be baptized the same day. Unfortunately not too long ago Teresa was diagnosed with breast cancer. She received treatment, but she was still suffering from it. 2 days before her baptism, she had to go to the hospital because she was not doing well. She was not baptized that week, but her kids were. She continued in the hospital. The next week her kids were confirmed, and received the Holy Ghost. 2 days later, Elder Silva and Elder Phillips went to the hospital to give her a blessing… and later that night Teresa passed away. We were all pretty shocked by the news. It’s good to know that she is not suffering anymore. However, she left her kids with no mother, and unfortunately they also have no father. They are left on their own. Moniz (who is the older brother) has been having to take care of everything. He was supposed to be baptized this last week, but due to the tragedy he was not able to. It’s sad to see these kids we love so much left alone. They have been taking it really well though. They have a lot of support from family and friends that live near by. Elder Barton and I went to the funeral on Saturday. It was pretty sad. They need everyone’s prayers. We are hoping they aren’t forced to be split up. We aren’t sure what is going to happen yet. The church has been helping them a lot though. How good it is to know that Heavenly Father loves His children so much. He lead us to that family. They were baptized and received the Holy Ghost right before their mother passed away. Heavenly Father knew they would need His help during this hard time. It helped boost my testimony. Keep them in your prayers please. They need all the strength they can receive. Their names are Moniz, Kayla, Stefanya, and Diogo.

That was our week for you. The craziest things happen in the mission. I love you all. See you next week.

Elder Porter

Hello all.

This week was a rather good week as well! Heavenly Father is constantly blessing us out here! This week we were able to baptize 2 people- Joyce and Gerhard.

Joyce is a 14 year old girl from Angola that we found a couple of weeks back while we were teaching one of our recent converts, Cílio (DJ Firmeza). We found out later on that she was the cousin of some of our recent converts as well (Márcia, Lusia, Ana, David, and Tatianna). In our first lesson with her, she told us that she had never been baptized and that she would like to be baptized. The only problem we had is that her parents are both in Angola. We had to call over to Angola and have a conversation with her parents so that they could allow her to be baptized. They allowed her to be baptized!

Gerhard is the brother of Gil (who was baptized last week). He had absolutely no problems with everything we taught him. He just took it all in. He is one of the chillest, most relaxed people I have ever met. He is 18 years old and he is from São Tomé. He invited tons of friends to his baptism! Quite a few of them came. A lot of his friends are also interested in the church now because of him.

Something I forgot to mention last week. My recent convert, Júlio, received his mission call! He is going to be serving in this mission! I was super excited for him. He will going to the MTC in July, and he arrives in the mission field at the end of July or early August. Some of my old companions might be able to serve with him. Pretty crazy! I was super happy when I found that out.

I really feel uninspired to write a lot. Please forgive me. Things here are going really well. We are keeping super busy. Things are looking really well for this week. We have a lot of people that we are teaching, and a lot of people that are wanting to be baptized! It should be a pretty exciting week. I hope everyone is doing great! Have an awesome week!

Elder Porter

Hello everyone who is reading this at the moment.

Things have been going extremely well out here. This past week the Lord blessed us with 7 baptisms in our area! We were able to baptize Célia, Lidia, Kayla, Stefanya, Diogo, Gil, and Norberto.

Celia and Catia....They are so small.

Célia was baptized on Saturday, and was confirmed the following day. She is Catia’s sister (Cátia was baptized 2 weeks ago). The hard thing about Célia was that we have no way of talking to her except on Sunday. She lives in a boarding school. We marked her baptism right after she attended Cátia’s baptism, and told us that she also wanted to be baptized. We weren’t really sure how we were going to be able to teach her, considering we could only see her once a week. We prayed to figure out what we could do. We felt that we needed to teach her the lessons over the phone. And that’s exactly what we did. She was so easy to teach as well. She accepted everything, and even took notes of everything we taught her. It’s not easy to teach someone over the phone, but it managed to work out. She was super happy on the day of her baptism.

Lidia is the sister of a recent convert named Wilson. I had actually met Lidia a long time ago, in my first transfer in Sacavém. At that time, she really wasn’t too interested in the church. When I came back though, we began teaching her. She is 16 years old, and from Angola. She is way awesome. She was actually marked to be baptized last week, but the baptism fell through due to some problems. She was super happy yesterday after her baptism.

Kayla, Stefanya, and Diogo are siblings. Gil is their cousin. They are an awesome family we just found a couple of weeks back. They are from São Tomé (an island in Africa). Their mom, Teresa, was also marked to be baptized along with them. Unfortunately, she went to the hospital and was there all week. She suffered from breast cancer, and still hasn’t completely recovered. We are praying that she starts doing better and is able to leave the hospital soon! They are a super cool family though! We love them so much! Gil’s mom, Christina, is marked to be baptized this week now. We are planning to mark his brother  Gerard to be baptized this weekend as well. We will be going over there tonight! There were a bunch of people at the baptism! Unfortunately the baptismal font was broken, and they were baptized in cold water haha. They all toughed it out thought, and it was a good experience!

Norberto was a very special baptism for us. Norberto was baptized separately from every one else, at about 8:30pm last night. Let me tell you why. Norberto is one of the most prepared people I have ever met in my life. The first time we invited him to be baptized he said, “I have been waiting for an invite like this my entire life.” When we taught him the Word of Wisdom he said, “I always thought that God should have a commandment like this.” When we taught him tithing he said, “when you guys leave tonight, I am going to go find a box and start collecting my tithing in that box for now on.” When we taught him the Restoration, everything made perfect sense to him… to the point that as we were teaching about the Book of Mormon he said to us, “I think I get it elders… this book is proof that the church of Jesus Christ was restored on the earth, and all I need to do is pray and ask Heavenly Father and I can receive an answer just like Joseph Smith.” He said that before we had even arrived at that point. Every time we taught him, we just realized what a special child of Heavenly Father he truly was. Then something bad happened. Friday morning Elder Silva and Elder Barton went to his house and found him laying on the couch in pain. He said he had messed up his back, and had a herniated disk in it. This was not the first time this has happened. He has a lot of problems with his back. In 2010 he had to stay in the hospital for 2 months just to get his back fixed. He said that this was the first time that he had messed up his back again since 2010. He couldn’t even left himself off the couch. Elder Phillips and I returned that night to give him a blessing. You could just see in his face he was in a LOT of pain. He looked like he was about to cry every time he made a movement. We gave him a blessing. And afterwards, he was able to sit up and start walking around the house slowly. He was still in a lot of pain, but he was making progress. Saturday, we went back over so that he could do his baptismal interview. He had to do the interview, because he was not able to get up out of bed. Sunday, he was not able to go to church because of the problem. We talked to the branch president, President Ike, about the situation that Norberto was in. Norberto told us that he still wanted to be baptized if it were possible. He said that he had faith that God would give him enough strength to be baptized. We scheduled the baptism for later that night after our other baptisms because we knew it would take him a while to get out to the car, we would have to drive extremely carefully and slowly, and that it would take him a long time to change clothes, etc. But that’s exactly what we did. The baptism only consisted of us 4 missionaries, Norberto, and President Ike. Norberto, through all of his pain, was baptized that night. It was not a normal baptism though, because he could not lean back. So what happened is Elder Phillips and I both got in the baptismal font, and instead of being baptized with his back entering the water, he was baptized face first from his knees. You could see in his face he was in so much pain. But when he left that water, his face consisted of the biggest smile I have ever seen in my life. It was a very special moment. He gave Elder Phillips and I a huge hug… and said “eu consegui” or in other words, “I did it.” He was so happy. I was extremely touched by how much pain he went through in order to follow Jesus Christ. His faith helped strengthen all of our testimonies that night. He is going to be a great member of the church. I have met few people with as much faith as he has.

Elder Barton, Elder Silva, Elder Phillips (in the back) Norberto and Elder Porter

Norberto

Elder Phillips, Norberto and Elder Porter

So, that was our week for you. It was crazy busy! Heavenly Father has been blessing us so much out here! We are so grateful for all He is doing. I hope you are all having a wonderful time. I love you all so much!

Elder Porter

Happy late Easter everyone! I hope everyone enjoyed the special day :)

I am going to be honest in saying that I had completely forgotten it was Easter. It wasn’t until I arrived in church that I had remembered. It was a good day though! I enjoyed it. Yesterday we were able to baptize a 13 year old named Iago. I don’t think I have ever met someone so excited for their baptism as he was. He has been talking about it since last week when we marked him. He told everyone he knew that he was going to be baptized. It was super cool :) he is an awesome kid! He already wants to go on the temple trip next month… and is excited to start passing the sacrament when he receives the priesthood in a couple of weeks. He is one of the most intelligent kids I have ever met. He is a white kid that speaks Crioulo fluently (the language they speak in Cape Verde even though the national language is Portuguese). He also speaks English really well. A very intelligent kid! We love him to death. The baptism went really well. He asked if he could give the closing prayer, so he did. It was super cool.

We have 7 people marked to be baptized this weekend! Their names are Norberto, Kayla, Teresa, Estefánia, Diogo, Célia, and Gil. We have plans to mark 3 more people to be baptized this weekend as well. Heavenly Father has been very kind to us lately! We had an amazing week this past week. We found TONS of new and amazing people. What a blessing it has truly been. We are very grateful for everything He has done for us this past week :)

Things here are going great. Keep the work in your prayers if you could! We need lots of prayers to help us out here!

Elder Porter

I heard Idaho got a joke played on it with some snow.

This week was nuts for us! We had to take care of the entire mission due to President Torgan going to the states to be called as an area seventy in Brazil. We were extremely blessed in spite of all the craziness that happened. We had 4 baptisms this weekend! Andressa and Lavínia were baptized on Saturday, and on Sunday Catia and Luísa were both baptized! It was awesome! I will give you a brief summary of all 4 of them.

Andressa is a 22 year old Brazilian girl. She has been living in Portugal since she was 18 years old. She is married to a man named Tiago, who has been a member for many years now (he was baptized in Brazil) but was inactive for a long time. A few weeks ago he had a dream that he needed to return back to the church. He decided that he needed to return back to the church, and bring his wife with him. They went to church in Póvoa (another city) and the elders passed on their reference to us because they lived in our area. The elders here is Sacavém began teaching her, and later on marked her for baptism. She already had her baptism date marked when I came back to the area. She is amazing! One of the most prepared people I have ever met. She never had a single problem with anything. She knew she needed to be baptized, and she already knew the church was true. She just soaked it all in. We almost thought it was too good to be true, and any moment she was going to come out with a doubt. She was baptized on Saturday, and she was super happy in her baptism.

Lavínia is Andressa and Tiago’s niece. We marked her for baptism on Monday night. She is the smartest 8 year old  girl I have ever met. She understood EVERYTHING we taught her. She explained the Joseph Smith story better than I have ever heard anyone explain it in my life. She even knew the scripture (James 1:5) that he read before praying. She is probably one of the cutest little 8 year old girls I have ever met as well. She was super happy to be baptized. Everything just made sense to her. What a special little girl she is. It goes to show why Jesus constantly says in the scriptures that we need to be like a child. Lavínia was baptized on Saturday with Andressa. They were both a blessing from Heavenly Father! Now Tiago is back active, and even asked me yesterday how he could pay his tithing. And the grandma (who is also a member) is back active as well. What an amazing family!

Cátia is a 23 year old Cape Verdian girl. She is a good friend of one of my recent convert’s named Catia as well (the one we baptized in President Torgan’s pool). We marked her for baptism on Tuesday. She had been to church a couple of times, but had some doubts due the law of chastity. We went over there and had a really good lesson with her and her boyfriend explaining why they needed to live the law of chastity and the blessings they would receive from it. They both agreed. However, they did not want to get married. But her boyfriend, Dino, decided that he would go live in his brothers house so that Cátia would be able to get baptized. Cátia was super happy after her baptism yesterday! We had her baptism right after one of the general conference sessions.

Luísa is the mom of a girl who was baptized 2 weeks ago in Sacavém (Jucileine). She is one of those types who you aren’t really sure if she is understanding everything you are teaching her… but when you ask a question about what you taught her she always answers correctly. She is just a little bit slow when it comes to responding things. She is super awesome though. We marked her for baptism on Thursday. She was super happy to be baptized. She will be confirmed with her daughter on Sunday (her daughter wasn’t confirmed this week due to conference) so that will be a special experience for them both. Our recent convert, Fátima (who was baptized on December 24th), helped us out a ton with her. I don’t think Luísa would have been baptized if it weren’t for Fátima! Fátima is super strong in the church now. She has a burning testimony and has been helping a ton of people lately! It is cool to see how much she has progressed over the months, considering when we found her she was almost completely hopeless and wanted to give up on life! It shows how much Heavenly Father cares about His children. Luísa was another huge blessing from Heavenly Father!

So, as you can all tell, our week was awesome! We had to do everything President Torgan normally has to do… but we were extremely blessed on top of that. We lost a lot of sleep, but it was completely worth it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to see a lot of conference due to lots of craziness… but I will watch and read the talks when they are published online. From what I did see, I loved it. It was really good. I hope everyone else was able to enjoy it!

I was able to see a few of my recent converts from Benifica as well! Bruno is preparing to go on a mission soon, as well. He hits his year mark in May, and he has a goal to leave by the end of the year. How cool is that? Júlio is waiting to get his papers back from Salt Lake City. So, he will be receiving his call pretty soon. I’m excited to see where he ends up going! It’s cool to see the fruits from our labor out here.

Things are going extremely well. It has been awesome to see all my recent converts back here in Sacavém. This place is pretty much my second home. I feel so comfortable here, and feel like all these people are basically my family. Heavenly Father has been so good to me the past couple of years. What a blessing this has all been in my life. I have truly grown to love the Portuguese, African, and Brazilian people. It’s cool to be able to interact with so many different people. It’s even cooler to be able to bring so much happiness into the lives of these people we love so much. What a huge blessing.

I love you all, and hope you are all doing great!

Elder Porter

Hello all.

My time is very short today, so I will try to be as detailed as the time permits.

We had an awesome week in Braga this week! We ended up baptizing a kid named Eizzy on Saturday. There’s kind of a cool story behind him. He is the brother of one of the members in Braga (Natália). He had just moved to Braga from Angola about a month ago. We began teaching him a little bit, but because of scheduling conflicts we were never able to teach him a whole lot. But he started coming to the activities and started coming to sacrament meeting as well. On Tuesday, we had prayed during our district meeting to see who the Lord was preparing for us that week. All three of us felt his name really strong. We had only taught him once before that, but we trusted in the Lord and knew that He only speaks truth. We called Eizzy to mark an appointment with him that day. He said he would be at school all day, and really wouldn’t have time to talk to us. He said it would have to be later that night if we wanted to talk him. Ended up, that we were able to talk to him until around 9:45 pm (15 minutes before we had to be home). We called President Torgan and we got permission to stay out a bit later in order to teach him. During the lesson, we told him how we had felt when we prayed earlier that day. At first he was very hesitant, and said that he didn’t feel like he would be ready by this weekend. We then got our knees and decided to ask Heavenly Father what He wanted. After the prayer, it was kind of silent for a while. But then he told us that he wanted to be baptized this weekend, and that he felt that’s what Heavenly Father wanted him to do. We were all super excited. He was baptized on Saturday, and confirmed on Sunday. He was super excited, and it was an awesome baptism! He is going to make a great member of the church.

That was my last baptism in Braga though. I was transferred out of the area. I was transferred back to an area in which I know all too well. Yes, I was transferred back to Sacavém. I already served here for about 7 1/2 months. But apparently the Lord wanted me to come back. I won’t lie I was a little bummed to leave Braga, but I’m also very excited to come back to Sacavém. I love everyone here. It feels like my home. It is going to be awesome to see all my recent converts here. I couldn’t think of a better place to end my mission.

We have 2 people marked to be baptized on Saturday. Their names are Andressa and Lavinia. Keep them in your prayers!

I love you all. Have a great week.

Elder Porter

Well, here I am once again… with my usual weekly e-mail.

This week was quite the crazy week. It was quite stressful, at that. I must say that some days I feel like I am going to die of a heart attack haha. I didn’t think dealing with other peoples lives would ever be so stressful. But it truly is. I’m glad that it is not my own personal stress though. It is a good stress :)

Unfortunately, there are no baptism reports this week. We have a crazy story about that which I will talk about later on. However, Gillian and Chris were both confirmed yesterday and are doing very well! Janaína went to the temple this past week as well, and she loved it. It’s awesome to see your recent converts going to the temple :) I sure do miss the temple though, I am jealous of all them!

So, about the baptism thing. We received a call on Thursday from someone we had not met. Her name is Lorena. She told us that she wanted to talk to us, but we needed to go over there right then because she was getting ready to head out. We had just barely walked in the house, and were in the process of making lunch when she called us to tell us this. However, we put lunch on hold and hurried out to talk to her. We arrived at her home, and began speaking to her. She told us how she is a half sister of one of the members here in Braga (Kiwa) and how she had been to church a couple of times, and was being taught in the past by the missionaries. She even said she was on track to be baptized, but things didn’t work out. She then said, “the reason I called you guys is because I want to know what I need to do in order to be baptized.” We just all smiled, and told her she was talking to the right people haha. We began teaching her, and answering her question. We then decided to kneel down and pray with her, so that we could ask Heavenly Father when she needed to be baptized. We all had a very strong feeling that she needed to be baptized that weekend. Things were on track for her to be baptized this weekend. She went to go visit her daughter on Saturday, in a city about an hour out of Braga. We called her all day Saturday, and she answered her phone very rarely. Long story short, she was not able to get back to Braga yesterday in order to go to church, and be baptized. It was little bit of a bummer. But we are going to talk to her tonight, and hopefully we can get her baptized this upcoming weekend. Keep her in your prayers though, because she really needs this help!

That’s a good summary of our week. Things are going well though. We have been crazy busy, and things just never seem to stop. Our 8 hours of sleep, feel like 8 minutes usually. Haha gotta love the mission! Things are awesome though. I’m loving life. We are heading into the last week of this transfer. We are hoping to end things strongly here! I hope I don’t get transferred out for my last transfer. I guess we will have to wait and see next week!

I love you guys.

Elder Porter

hello all.

We just finished an amazing week! It was a lot of work, but it all paid off in the end! Yesterday, we held the baptism of Chris and Gillian. It was an awesome baptism. They were both super excited. Let me give a brief story about how we found both of them. We found Chris one night a couple of weeks ago. I saw him in the street and felt like we needed to go talk to him. So…. we did. We started talking to him and he seemed way cool. We marked another visit a couple of days later, and from there we began teaching him. He told us how he had never been baptized before and that he would like to be eventually. He was always super accepting of everything. He just soaked it all in. We marked his baptismal date not too long after that, and just continued helping him from there. He gave up smoking in order to be baptized as well. He came to church yesterday dressed up in a suit and beaming from ear to ear. He was super excited. After he got out of the water, he started talking to his friends who were at the baptism, telling them that when he received the priesthood he was going to baptize them all ha-ha.

Gillian, Elder Porter, Chris

Gillian we found knocking doors. He is actually a good friend of Chris as well. We were walking by a building last Saturday, and felt we needed to knock one of the doors. Maciel (who is Chris’s roommate) happened to open the door. He said he was playing playstation with some friends, and told us to come in and meet his friends. And that is how we met Gillian. He was one of the most elect (prepared by Heavenly Father) person I have ever found. Right from the beginning he started asking tons of questions, and wanted to know more. He came to church with us the following day (much to our surprise) and right after he started talking about how he wanted to be baptized. He said, “elders I’m not sure if I’m ready to be baptized this week, but I want to be baptized soon.” we hadn’t really even challenged him to baptism yet, and he was already saying things like that. On Friday night, we were teaching him and we invited him to say a prayer asking Heavenly Father when he would be prepared for baptism. After he was done praying, we all felt really strongly about that weekend (2 days later). He looked up with a huge smile on his face, and said I’m ready to be baptized this weekend! It was super cool. One week and one day after knocking on his door, Gillian was baptized.

Elder Agee, Elder Baltodano, Maciel, Gillian, Patrick, Chris, and I)

Chris and Gillian are like our brothers. They are super cool. Heavenly Father truly blessed us. They were both super happy after their baptisms. What a beautiful thing the gospel truly is. We were all very happy for them as well.

Things have been going really well out here! We have been finding a lot of really good people. Heavenly Father has been blessing us so much! We have been super grateful for what He has been giving us as of lately.

Basically, that sums up our week. We had to go to Lisbon on Tuesday for a meeting as well. I like going back to Lisbon. I sometimes miss it (after being there for over a year). But I love Braga, and I am super grateful that I have been able to serve here!

Braga

I hope everyone is doing well. I am doing just fine. The weather is beautiful, and we are ready to take on a new week. Soak in life, it really is a great thing. Just look forward, and never look back… time is too short to dwell in the past. After all of our struggles come all of our blessings. That’s the beautiful thing about this life. It makes me sad to see people miserable all the time. It isn’t worth it.

I love you all.

Elder Porter

Well, it’s that time of week again. Things are starting to look brighter around here in Braga now. We have been in quite the war so far. Luckily there have been no deaths… but it has been quite the battle. So, I will give an update on Edy and Erica to start off. Unfortunately, they were not baptized yesterday. I talked in my last e-mail about how the parents were going to talk together before making a final decision. Well part of this “talking” included going on the internet and researching our church. And as most members know, that is probably not the best idea. They found a TON of garbage about the church. I think a lot of it wasn’t even our church, it was the RLDS church to be quite honest. They found some things that they didn’t like (nor would I, if it were true). We called the mom to see if they had come to a decision yet… and she basically told us that our church was crazy, and would appreciate it if we never went by their house again. It was pretty sad, to say the least. Erica and Edy were quite bummed out as well. Erica had tried telling her parents not to believe what they see on the internet, but their parents didn’t want to hear anymore. It was quite the bummer, because Erica and Edy were quite sad about it as well. We have faith that things will work out in the future, but for now that is where we stand with them. The moral of this story is: don’t believe everything you find on the internet. We had a good day at church yesterday though. We had 7 investigators at church. We have one kid named Chris marked to be baptized this Sunday. He is pretty excited about it. He loved church yesterday. We are actually going to go play basketball with him and a few of his friends in just a little bit. He is 24 years old, and is from Cape Verde. He is a super cool kid. He has a lot of friends who are interested in the church as well, including one that went to the baptism yesterday. His name is Gillean. We found him on Saturday night, and he came to church with us the next day. We went and taught him last night, and he was already telling us how he wants to be baptized as well. We have a feeling that with the baptism of Chris, many more will follow. Heavenly Father blessed us with him, that is for sure.  We went and had pancakes last night. It has been a long time since I have eaten pancakes, so that was cool. We ate them over at the Marinho’s home. They are a really cool British family in our ward. The dad is actually the stake president up here. I love this ward here. It is awesome! I hope I will be able to end my mission here, that would be really cool. I think this is the perfect place to end my mission! But I guess Heavenly Father will decide that for me. Well, it’s that time of week again. . We had 7 investigators at church. We have one kid named Chris marked to be baptized this Sunday. He is pretty excited about it. He loved church yesterday. We are actually going to go play basketball with him and a few of his friends in just a little bit. He is 24 years old, and is from Cape Verde. He is a super cool kid. He has a lot of friends who are interested in the church as well, including one that went to the baptism yesterday. His name is Gillean. We found him on Saturday night, and he came to church with us the next day. We went and taught him last night, and he was already telling us how he wants to be baptized as well. We have a feeling that with the baptism of Chris, many more will follow. Heavenly Father blessed us with him, that is for sure. So, things are starting to pick up here. We went and had pancakes last night. It has been a long time since I have eaten pancakes, so that was cool. We ate them over at the Marinho’s home. They are a really cool British family in our ward. The dad is actually the stake president up here. I love this ward here. It is awesome! I hope I will be able to end my mission here, that would be really cool. I think this is the perfect place to end my mission! But I guess Heavenly Father will decide that for me.  Today I hit my 22 month mark in the mission. I can hardly believe that. I don’t feel like I have been out that long. I feel like I still have a ton to learn. I think I would prefer if time slowed down just a little bit. Leaving all this behind is quite the sad thought. I have another amazing 2 months to look forward to though :) I love you all very much. I hope everyone is doing well. Thanks for all your prayers on our behalf. We appreciate it.

Elder Porter

Hello all.

Things were a bit rough this week! We fought, fought, and fought to help some people get baptized this weekend- but we fell short. It was quite the battle too. It was one of those weeks that was full of up’s and down’s. Welcome to the mission :) Satan does one heck of a job on some of these people!

We have two teenagers marked for baptism this weekend. There names are Edy (14) and Erica (17). We are going to need a lot of prayers from your end! The mom was cool with them being baptized, until we went to go get her signature last night. She kind of flipped around, and talked about how they are Catholic and how they shouldn’t change. She said she needs to think about it, and talk to her husband before they make any final decision. Edy and Erica really want to be baptized this weekend. So we need a lot of extra help. They are amazing kids, and they deserve this help! I know that Heavenly Father will help us out! We just need all your faith as well :) every little extra boost helps.

Braga has been warming up a lot lately, which has been really nice. I was getting tired of the cold! We had a good day at church yesterday. We had 4 investigators there with us. We have just had some little road blocks in the way lately. But things are going to change this week! That’s the great thing about the mission. You learn a little bit about everything. I probably just needed to learn to be a little bit more humble. I was probably getting to confident in my ownself, and relying too little on Heavenly Father. It has been an amazing thing to see how much these people are being prepared by Heavenly Father. It has been a huge blessing to be a part of it. It’s sad to know that it’s coming to an end in not so long. I have to make the best out of these next couple of months!

Thank you all for everything that you guys are doing for me. It is great to hear from some of you, and hear how you are doing. I feel like time stopped back at home, but I have realized it has not. I think just about all of my friends are married now haha. I love you all more than words can express. I hope to hear from some more of you :) don’t forget about me!

Elder Porter