Braga is Amazing!

esta semana passada foi bem suave!

We had a good week here in Braga! I’m loving this city. The people here are super awesome. The church, the youth, and everything about it. Well, the cold isn’t my favorite thing… nor all the walking we do. But besides that, it’s super amazing here. We found some really cool people this week! We were able to get 8 people in sacrament meeting yesterday! Which is pretty good considering Sacrament meeting starts at 9am.

Yesterday both Ana and Gina were baptized! The baptismal service went super well! The Spirit was really strong. It has been a while since I have had a baptismal service run so smoothly. It’s nice having a chapel with a baptismal fonte haha. Ana was in tears because the Spirit was so strong! Gina was super happy as well. She brought a ton of friends to her baptism! They all really liked it. We had quite a few investigators at the baptismal service. They both have pretty cool stories behind them. Ana was someone they had started teaching right before I came into the area. A few days before I came to Braga, she had called Elder Silva and said that she already has a church and she doesn’t want us to teach her anymore. But when I came into the area, Elder Silva told me about her… and also said that he felt like we still needed to help her. We decided to pray about her, and see what the Lord though. We all had a really strong feeling that she needed to be baptized yesterday. We went there to teach her for the first time (we used Elder Lee and I as an excuse to be able to teach her, saying that we wanted to get to know her) but she was still saying that the same thing. It was a good lesson, and the Spirit was clearly there… but she just didn’t want to accept. She prayed with us though, and she felt something different. However, she still didn’t want to budge. We told her to pray that night alone, and that we would come back the next day to see how it went. When we went back the next day, she said she felt really well when she prayed! She received an answer! Part way into the lesson, we were able to mark her baptism for the following week. On Monday, we had a family night over at the Stake President’s home. His family did a really good job at helping her feel welcome. She loved it! She was super happy at her baptism yesterday, it was super cool!

Gina was a surprise as well! The first time the elders went to her home, she was super depressed and bitter about life. They went there to teach one of her friends, and she happened to be there at the same time. They invited them both to church, and to their surprise she showed up to church the next day. They kind of lost contact with her after that, though. We called her up last week, to mark a lesson with her. We were able to mark one, and we began teaching her. As we taught her, we were able to see a real change taking place. We marked her baptism in our second visit, and she gave up smoking, alcohol, and coffee to be baptized. It was definitely super hard for her. She had been smoking for the past 15 years. But she gave it up completely in a matter of days. She was super happy as well yesterday! It’s so cool to see the gospel changing the lives of these people. It was really cool to be able to help them all out!

This morning we had a lesson with one of the people who went to church yesterday. Her name is Jenaína. She is super cool! We marked her to be baptized this weekend. So if you could pray to help her out, we would really appreciate it! We have plans to mark a few more people for baptism as well! Things are really picking up here!

So, as you can tell, things are going well. I’m really loving the work out here. This city is ready to explode! The members have such a big vision as well, and are super supportive.

I hope everything is well back at home. I love you all and miss you all.

Elder Porter