Aveiro - 3/21/16

Olá minha família!!! Como estão?

WE HAD A BAPTISM!!! It’s official, Rulanda has been baptized!!!! This week has been soo stressful because of this baptism, but it’s all worth it! I’m kinda happy though, it’s over haha.

So this week we were working with her a lot! We were meeting with her like everyday, just to make sure she sticks with her commitments. At the beginning of the week, it was hard, cuz she was smoking more than she was supposed to. We had to have a few faca (pronounced faka. it means knife, but the connotation is like calling someone to repentance) sessions with her, and that was really rough, but she was able to keep her commitments on smoking after that. We also learned that she may have had an issue with the law of chastity, but turns out, not. Thank goodness!!! We were freaking out there for a moment!

We had her baptism this past Saturday in Coimbra, along with some other people that the Zone Leaders were baptizing. It was awesome! We wanted to have it separate from those guys, but nobody from Aveiro could come -__- so we had to combine, but it was still awesome! Also cuz Aveiro doesn’t have a baptismal font, and she didn’t wanna get baptized in the ocean haha. Her brother, Irmao Valdimar Ferreira, who’s been teaching her with us, baptized her. It was sooo cool to be able to see her be baptized, and just that look of happiness on her face when she came up out of the water! Afterward, she bore her testimony, which was nice. I’m sooo happy that we were able to help her make the decision to complete this necessary step.

Wait but that’s not all! Yesterday, Sunday, the day she’s to be confirmed, I’m making my breakfast (breakfast sandwiches) when we call her to make sure she’s still coming to church, when we find out she’s stuck in the elevator of her building!!! Apparently, she had been stuck for an hour and a half and nobody had answered her calls or anything!!! So we sprint over there and were able to get her out, and she is just panicked and stressed out haha. She is like out of it! But she said she’d come to church so we’re like alright, awesome, we’re still good.....but she doesn’t end up coming to church!!! So sad!!! I guess she called Valdimar and told him she wasn’t coming and he was just like ok, and we’re like Valdimar?!! But we’ll get her next week. 

I learned that exercising faith is literally exercising! You have to do all you can, just work hard, and even though it seems like it might not happen, you just keep working and believing that God will make it work out. He really does reward us for our faith. I also learned that Satan is indeed real. I mean, really, how much more random can that situation with Rulanda get? haha He doesn’t like it when we are doing what are supposed to, and he’s working hard to keep us from doing what we’re supposed to, but we can and will beat him if we stay focused on Christ and do what we’re supposed to. Another thing that clicked in my mind is that the future doesn’t exist. We only have right now. So if we wanna make changes, it has to be right now because if we leave it to the future, it will never happen! Our investigators are making changes in their lives to be baptized and to come unto Christ, but the real changes happen after we stop teaching them. We’re just here to get them started on the path.

I’m starting to get super excited for the missionary work! I wasn’t not excited before for the work, but now I feel like I’m truly excited! I just wanna be able to go out and teach and baptize everyone!!! I just need to stay focused, put my pride on the side, and work!!!

I’ve kept a list of some things I’ve noticed in Portugal this week:

Aside from the cobbled streets and tiled walls I’ve mentioned before, everyone drives crazy! But you can still walk in the cross walk whenever you like cuz they’ll stop for you haha. •They have a really good bus system and really nice buses. •They have awesome bread! (I know I’ve said that before, but I love their bread!) •Their teeth are not too good  •They deliver pizza on mopeds. They’re everywhere! •Everyone smokes! •They have like old fashion keys and locks, and their door knobs are just for looks. You don’t actually use um haha •They have roundabouts here. It’s kinda different, but it’s cool. They don’t really have stoplights though. •Todo mundo é catolico mas não practicant hahaha (everyone is catholic, but are not practicing). This is like the stereotypical answer we get from everyone when we do street contacts and ask if they are religious or believe in God haha •They only wear slim, skinny, or super skinny jeans. I don’t think I’ve seen normal kine jeans anywhere. Small kine ʻokoʻa haha. •They have a lot of barber shops and bike shops. There’s a large cycling community here. A lot of guys look pretty serious too. I like one nice road bike now haha. •They don’t have water fountains here either. I’ve only seen one this whole time, and it was broken. •Not everyone, but some people really do talk with their hands hahahaha. I think that’s all, but I’ll write other peculiarities I’ve noticed.

Cooking’s has been going well. I made burgers last time I had to cook, and I’ll make that again this week. The food here is pretty cheap, so I just grine haha. Don’t plan on getting fat though. The scale in our house says I’m 160-ish, but I know it’s a little broken, so I really don’t know.

My housemate’s foot is doing better. He’s been walking around on it a little more, but he’s not healed yet. Turns out, he has a cyst on his foot which is causing the pain. I don’t know how they’re gonna take care of that, but he has a few more doctors appointments to go to this week to find out. Pretty weird huh?

Happy to hear that Jonah is getting a lot of support and that progress is being made. That is awesome! Wings baby! So proud of all of you guys! Everyone is growing up sooo fast! Work hard, play hard!

Funny thing that you talk about the Book of Mormon cuz that’s what I’ve been studying about this week haha. I think it’s awesome that President Erbe has made that challenge. I always carry a Book of Mormon with me so that I can give it out if someone is interested. When people gain a testimony of the Book of Mormon, they will know that the church is true, that Joseph Smith was a prophet, and that Jesus is the Christ. Keep up the good work!

I love you, family! You guys are awesome! Hoʻomau i ka hana maikaʻi!

Até próximo vez,

Elder Kim

P.S. Please tell Kui to write me, and also, I’d love it if you’d continue to write in Hawaiian, if it’s not too much hassle