Hola from Benfica!

hello again!!!!

Family:  I CANT BELIEVE YOU WENT TO HARRY POTTER WORLD WITHOUT ME YOU KNOW IMMA BE THROWING A FIT WHEN I GET HOME SO WE GO BACK!!! VOU DAR FACA GRANDE A VOCES SE NOS NAO VAMOS PARA MUNDO HARRY POTTER DE NOVO.

Any way...

This week was roughhhh. All of our plans are falling, we arent finding new investigators, no one is progressing.... its been rough. This friday we tried to do these visita guiadas of the chapel... standing out on the street and singing and inviting the people who live close to come in. well, it starting raining hecka hard during it and we had a grand total of... one person enter!! oh and also it was just me and sister wach doing it... the elders ditched out and no members showed up. Can you say disaster? Haha man. One of those days where im just glad it ended.

Well, this is the last week of this transfer!! time is really starting to go now. Im not sure what will happen, there is a good chance that ill be headed out of here. Pray for me!! Im about ready for anything at this point. Its good that this was my first area, I know ill get to come back at least at the end because the mission office is here, so that will be cool to see how the work has grown in a year and a few months. Wow i hit four months this week. wow.

So the work has been rough, like I said. This week we got a call from one of our ZLs, coolest dude ever, Redheaded Elder Ryan from Ireland, like 25 years old, converted less than two years ago and was in an Irish rock band or something like that before his mission. Shoot. Well, i just let it slip to him that we were having a really rough time and he just responded with an outpouring of love, letting us know that if we keep working and praying with faith, Heavenly Father will give us power from on high. He has such a testimony that i started crying. over the phone. And the next day our district leader gave us a little spiritual thought in the office (after i gave him some faca for being kindof a jerk to us) about our missionary purpose and what a successful missionary is and how Heavenly Father is just grateful for the work we are doing. Cried. again. Then that night our sister training leader gave us a call just to see how we were doing. Sis Pieper is our training leader, and it was good to hear from her. Every single one of those was a tender mercy from the Lord.

Milestones Reached:

My hair is long enough to put in a little bun on top of my head!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!

I was asking myself again one time this week, as I have so many times before, if president let me go home right now with out any consequences, would I? the answer this time was a resounding and firm NO. For the first time! Its hard, but i love being out here.

Last night I had a dream that I lived in a house, and we had one cat and then all of the sudden these cats started multiplying and taking over my house and it was really awful. I think its a direct effect of the portuguese, they love their pets more than their children. There is animal poop EVERYWHERE in benfica. We went and taught this old lady the other day and on the wall was like a montage of pictures of her and her bunny that recently passed away... and then she went and showed us her current guinea pig. I will never forget the way she coddled that thing
. People are crazy.

Speaking of crazies, we kept getting these text from this dude named Sergio whose number we had saved in our phone but I couldnt find his teaching record anywhere and we didnt know who he was and these texts we were getting were weird. But then he asked us a specific question about our beliefs and we just told him to LDS.org. Well, a couple days later we get another text saying that he did. And me and Sister wach were like, what...? an investigator thats actually keeping their commitments?? haha. so we decided to meet with him and he was just as insane as we thought. He was trying to speak english to us the whole time and it was awful. I handed him a portuguese BOM to have him read a scripture, told him to read it in portuguese and then he replies in english: okay, i will translate it to spanish. And reads the verses in spanish. why? we got out of there real fast after that.

Some cool people that Ive met: a brasilian joven in our ward named Riardson, neither of his parents are members, he walks like 30 minutes every sunday to church and twice a week to go to seminary and brings his little sister so that shell stay active. Another brasilian youth who was baptized against her parents will and also walks like 30 minutes to everything and LOVES helping the sister missionaries. shes awesome, ill send a pic one of these days. Her name is Aline. Also, Jessica finally got confirmed this week, but it is so cool to see her progressing. We had one of the youth pic her up since she isnt allowed to walk to church alone. She gets there and walks in, already packed her bag with her own snacks, waves to us and then is like, Vou para primaria agora, Tchau! Shoot girl, you go for it. She was the first one in there and just waited for the teacher to show up reverently. I can see her serving a mission. makes me happy.

Spiritual thought: 2 Nephi 25:23, it is by grace that we are saved after all we can do. Its just been something ive been studying and pondering lately. He will bless us after we have done all that we can do. This grace means the saving, atoning grace of the savior and also the day to day support and comfort that he gives us. Just some thoughts.

SHOUT OUT to nicole mcullough with the package full of halloween candy!!!! that was finished off within a few days. I LOVE YOU!!!!!

card full of pictures coming soon. Thanks for the pictures back of my first transfer, except i accidentally forgot that i left it in my camera when we went to go see a monument today. We saw the monument of discovery, or something like that. it was siiiiiick. But last week we went to Lapa again and ran into the sisters from odievelas which was awesome so that was fun.

Anyway, love you all, thanks for the letters, prayers, support. Keep building your faith!!

Paz, amor, casamento do templo,

Sister Kelly Briggs