Aveiro 4/25/2016

Olá minha família!

Hope you guys have all been well and working hard in our rainy town of Hilo. I won’t be able to email everyone today because today’s a holiday (Revolução dos Cravos) and all the places we’d normally go to to write, are closed, and so we’re all kinda sharing the computer I’m on right now to write our families.

I did my first thing of divisions (“splits”) this week with the Zone Leaders! It was awesome! Elder Meza went to Coimbra with Elder Garsia, and Elder Reed came here to do divisions with me. I was in charge all day and that was kinda weird. We had nobody marked to visit that day so we just spent that day walking around doing contacts, knocking doors, and passing people. Sadly, because it was a Friday, everyone was travelling home and stuff and was super busy. It was a blast though!

We’ve also been teaching our mark, Ana. She is sooo elect! She was able to make it to church, and everyone just loved her up, and she loved it!!! She said she really liked the classes. I’m soo happy! She hasn’t chosen yet though, whether she wants to be baptized in the ocean, the river, or in the baptismal font in Coimbra, since we don’t have one here in Aveiro. We will continue to work hard with her so that she will be baptized on the 7th of May.

A cool experience I had at church was that the other dupla of elders, Elder Gabbitas and Elder Teixeira, brought one of their investigators who is Russian. He only speaks Russian, and some English. I had the opportunity to mahele olelo for him, and explain some stuff to him during our priesthood session. He really liked it! Also, he had google translate on his phone and he’d write stuff in Russian and it’d translate to English for me and vice versa. It was soo cool! I just thought that technology, when used in the right way, is such an awesome tool and can definitely be a tool that we can share the Gospel!

Another cool thought I had was that I will never take the ability to communicate with others for granted again. I was thinking how awesome it is that we can communicate with others, and then I thought how awesome it is that we can communicate with our Father in Heaven. Thru prayer we have the opportunity to communicate with Him!!!! Isn’t that awesome!!!!????

As far as the language goes, I’m improving. I’m understanding a lot better what people are saying, can speak more comfortably, and reading is getting pretty easy. I understood everything on that attachment you sent me from Aunty Marta. È muito fixe!!!!

The weather has been getting hotter! I’m pretty happy about that. I feel like it’s been gloomy my whole mission, since I started in the winter, but the sun’s been coming out! Halelujah! I might even be little bit sunburn haha. O ia ka pilikia me ka ilikea haha.

I gotta get off now so my companion can write his family. Please send my love to Vaea, Kawena, Brandon, Kaiawe, and everyone! Sorry I couldn’t write everyone this week. I’ll try to respond next week. I’ll send pics next week! Os amo!!!! Ficam fixe!

Com amor,

Elder Kim

Revolução dos Cravos, Carnation Revolution, was initially a military coup in Lisbon, Portugal, on 25 April 1974 which overthrew the regime of the Estado Novo, the corporatist authoritarian regime. The revolution started as a military coup organized by the Armed Forces Movement, composed of military officers who opposed the regime, but the movement was soon coupled with an unanticipated and popular campaign of civil resistance. This movement would lead to the fall of the Estado Novo and the withdrawal of Portugal from its African colonies and East Timor. 

The name Carnation Revolution comes from the fact that almost no shots were fired and when the population took to the streets to celebrate the end of the dictatorship and war in the colonies, carnations were put into the muzzles of rifles and on the uniforms of the army men. In Portugal, the 25th of April is a national holiday, known as Freedom Day, Dia da Liberdade), to celebrate the event.