December Time Is Here!

December has already arrived? Today actually marks my 19 month mark here in the mission. Crazy how quickly time is rushing by.

We had a good week this week. And we kept quite busy, that’s for sure!

This week we were able to baptize two people.

Adélcia

The first person is named Adélcia. Adélcia is the daughter of one of our recent converts, Angela. Her best friend, Leo, is also one of our recent converts. So, it was definitely time for her to be baptized as well. At first she didn’t want to be baptized until May (because her birthday is in May), but after praying with her and everything we marked her for this past week. She is as stereotypical of a teenager as you can imagine (16 years old), with attitude and everything. Haha she faked like she had an attitude, at least. We had fun teaching her though, she is a really cool girl. She was baptized on Saturday.

The other person that we baptized this week is named Ilidio. Ilidio is actually the son of a member who lives in England now. She was an active member in Sacavém, so all the members knew his mom and were excited to see that he was going to be baptized. We passed by his house one day, and felt like we needed to knock on his door… so we did, and we began teaching him after that. He pretty much knew everything that we were teaching him. He talked about the prophecies in the Book of Mormon about Joseph Smith… when he began to talk about that, Elder Rodrigues and I looked at each other and asked him if he really hadn’t been baptized before. He said he was marked once to be baptized, but due to some certain events he never was. He was super excited about his baptism this time around. He had been caught up in a lot of gang related activity, and had lived a rough life. He was looking for a way out, and he found out. Haha the baptism was quite interesting too. He invited a bunch of friends to his baptism, and a bunch of them came. The funny part? They were all gangstas. It was quite the site. A lot of them enjoyed the baptism though, and maybe some of them will follow Ilidio’s example and be baptized down the road. We will have to see. They beat boxed and rapped in the van as we took them home.

Ilidio and his crew

It was a good week though. So far for this week we have a kid named Loyd marked for baptism. We have plans to mark a few more people though, so it should be good! Next Monday we are going to be having our Christmas conference here in the mission. So just as a warning- there is a 99.9% chance I will not be writing home next Monday. I will try to write at some point next week though. I can’t believe Christmas time is so near! We are going to buy a little Christmas tree and put it in our home. We have been listening to Christmas music as well. Christmas in the mission is quite enjoyable! It will be a good time for sure.

Things are going well over here. We met Michael Jackson’s biggest fan this week. He was a bit crazy. I’ve never seen someone with so much Michael Jackson memorabilia in my life. He even went as far as comparing Michael Jackson to God. haha. Funny man.

I hope you are doing well. I love you all!

com amor,

Elder Porter