Thanks for the Love and Letters

Thanks for the love and letters!

The day of my birthday was different... but also really good. we had a reunião de zona in Mem Martins, me and irma young are the only irmas in our zone now, that is weird for me, but it was a really good meeting. I went with lots of questions about the work, and i feel like all of them were answered. especially about faith and fear. one elder shared a story about how he was in his second transfer and he was training and he didnt know what he was doing in his area, and he just felt super scared. he had an interview with president torgan and President shared a scripture with him, i think it´s d &c ... somewhere that said basically why are the miracles not happening? because of the fear in your heart. He then talked about how we just cannot have fear in our heart, we cant doubt as missionaries. it just cant be that way. we have to have faith. throughout my mission i have always felt like a missionary of super little faith. for some reason this is one of the greatest challenges of my misssion, believe in God and all that He can do. Believe in myself as a true servant of the Lord. i try to believe, but i think i lose patience too quickly, and i lose trust in myself and in others and in the Lord. it is a really big challenge now that i am here with a new companion. She is so awesome because she jsut keeps reminding me that we are here to do God´s work so we should ask Him what He wants us to do. Then, we should go and do that work!! I still feel like i dont know the language. i mean i know enough to understand and get by, but me accent is horrible and many people dont know what i am saying. also, my vocab isnt that great, but paciencia i am the one who needs to fix that problem by studing more. But where is the time?? I will find time this week to use my time with more wisdom.

Well, there are miracles still happening all around the world, and here in Linda A Velha we had a neat experience this past week. A member, Maria Vinhais, called us and said that her neighbor wanted to meet with us. So we set up an appt with her for thursday. Her name is Conceição and she lives on Rua da Liberdade N 20!!! There is a story here... last transfer with irma Speigle i had a dream/woke up in the middle of the night thinking about rua da liberdade! I felt super strongly that someone on that street was ready to be baptized. During the middle of the night, i got up and went straight to the Area Book to look for anyone who lived on that street, and I found a lady named Conceição who lives in #20. i thought this is the lady that needs to be baptized!!!But for some reason, we never contacted her. we passed by but she wasnt home, and we called but she didn´t answer. So we moved on.

Then when Maria called, she said the name of the lady was isabel. i thought, cool, but didnt thonk much more of it. When we arrived at her door, she opened the door and as we introduced ourselves she said she is Conceição!! In that moment it clicked! This is the lady of my dream!! WOW! So she had met with the elders about a year ago, the livro de area is not really updated so we don´t know really what happened, but we started teaching her! She is really em baixo, (down) she doesn´t have much work, and she is looking for a way out of this darkness, and she thought of the missionaries, so she contacted maria! Maria is a super missionary!! She just wants to share the gospel with everyone! It is so great to work with her! After our first lesson with Conceição we visited some other people with Maria, and she is just cheia com fogo pela obra missionaria!! It got me all fired up too! :)

Friday, we returned to the house of conceição and invited her to be baptized! She accepted, and was a little emotional. she came to church sunday for the first time and it turns out that she knows some other members as well!! Already she is making friendships!! we are excited for her!! Her baptism will be next sunday, dia 14 de agosto! Please pray for her, she needs angels to protect her this week!

As for the rest of the week, we did a lot of procura but didnt have a ton of success. We did kind of an evaluation of our work last night and we really need to plan our time better so that we can help people progress!

Oh at church yesterday, a guy appeared during sacrament meeting,a dn stayed until the end then we talked with him. he is from brazil and his girlfriend lives there and she said to check out the church! We will have a lesson with him this week! we are so excited!!

i love the Lord and I know he is at the head of this work! I am so grateful to serve His children here in Portugal.

Congrats Scott!! that is so crazy!! i got his announcement the other day! super cute!!!

Thank you for the birthday package, grandma and mom and thank you too for the letters and prayers and support!

ps how is jacob any news??

irma young is from Hinckley, UT

irma Michael