Bemvindos ao Portamao

(Sister Ellsworth)

Hey!

This week has been such an adventure, filled with lots of travel time, miracles, and the works! On Sunday night we got our transfer calls and I was reassigned to Portimão to serve with Sister Aiono! I was super excited to get to know a new area!!

Monday we packed our bags, cleaned, and said goodbye to some of my favorite people in Barreiro. It was so hard! I was able to see all but one of my recent converts. Fabiana and Alda were so sweet and Amaral almost made me cry. He told me about the difference he felt in his life because of the things that I had done for him. It made me remember how hard we worked to teach him and to help him adjust to life as a loyal member. He bore his sweet, simple testimony to me and I felt like every rejection and slammed door was 10000X worth it and I would do it all over again just to find someone like Amaral again.

On Tuesday I rode the bus down to Portimão with two Elders to meet up with Sister Aiono, The bus ride was so long but it was glorious because I had my first nap in months. We didn't get to our area until really late at night so I had a quick tour of the chapel here and went home. The next day we visited some investigators and toured the area doing contacts and visiting members. That night we went back to Lisbon on the same bus to go to a meeting for leaders in the Mission, since Sister Aiono is a Sister Training Leader. We spent most of the day in Lisbon and came back to our area really late at night. The next day we worked our area some more!

On Saturday we went to Faro for Zone conference and learned a lot about how we can better our teaching. There were some members of Faro there and they pretended to be investigators and we taught them all of the lessons. We had some really powerful lessons that really strengthened my confidence in our teaching. On Sunday we had church and I taught Sunday School by myself! It was so nerve wracking but nobody apostatized so I guess it was good! Haha!

Everything has been super great and I'm happy!

Sister Oliver and I!

Sister Oliver, Amaral, and I! The first 10 pictures he refused to smile... This was the best one we got XD

Sister Aiono, Vitor (recent convert) and I! Vitor is actually really funny! He's a happy person I swear!

I hope you guys have a great week!

Love,

Sister Ellsworth

Highlights

(Elder Cummings)

This week we began teaching a Shaman.  That is a little different than just another person who follows the traditional Hmong animism.  It is equivalent to teaching paid clergy.  His income revolves around his spiritual practices.  That aside though, he is letting us teach him and we aren't keeping any secrets about where we see this all going---baptism.  His name is Khai, he has been in the states since the mid-90s, and he is very intrigued by the Book of Mormon and the joint concepts of apostasy and dispensation.  That is a miracle.  I bought a Hmong story book at the New Years that I have been using in language study, and in the initial contact with Khai we talked about some of the folklore, and that is a big part of why he let us start visiting.  It is so neat when you know that God has prepared you to meet someone.

We were tracting the Hmong families out of a neighborhood (a very long process, but an enjoyable one) and within minutes of arriving there a saleswoman from a solar company ran up to us and asked if we were Mormons.  We said yes and she said that she used to go to church as a young girl.  She had never been baptized, and said that she had heard some rumors about the church that she didn't like and wanted to fact-check.  They were very standard questions about some commonly misunderstood aspects of church history.  We answered here to the extent that we were qualified too and began to answer her last question "can I have one of those pamphlets?" by teaching her the message of the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  She loved it, took the pamphlet and a copy of the Book of Mormon, and we are handing her off to the YSA elders in Fresno to do the teaching.  Heavenly Father puts us in the right places at the right time.

God leads us and guides us.  One of my favorite things about missionary work is that it has taught me to be aware of that influence.  God loves us and watches over us.  I know this.

Count your many blessings this week!

Elder Cummings

A Baptism and Transfers!

(Sister Ellsworth)

Bom Dia!

This week has been awesome!! Our friend Fabiana was baptized! She's Alda's granddaughter, who was baptized a few months ago. She's been absolutely awesome to work with and she has such a strong and pure testimony. I absolutely loved to teach her about the great plan that Heavenly Father has for her.

And I'm being transferred to Portimau to serve with Sister Aiono! I already know her, she served in the area next to me and we lived in the same house my first transfer. She's so fun and I'm excited to learn a lot from her. I'm nervous to move on to another area but at least it's in the best part of Portugal!! I'm sad to leave Sister Oliver because she's been such a great friend and example to me. She's going to be training a new greenie here and I'm super excited for her.

One of the best things that happened this week was a little lesson we had with Fredy, our friend who is going to be baptized next week. We finished teaching him all of the lessons and we wanted him to come to a resolve on his own to be baptized. After the first hour of church on Sunday we pulled him into a room and began to just talk about everything. I was very nervous that he was going to tell us that he didn't want to be baptized anymore but instead he began to share his experiences of his prayers to know the truth and the happiness he felt with the new knowledge that he had. In that moment, all the work and frustrations we had gone through with him were redeemed as he bore his little and simple testimony that the Book of Mormon was truly another witness of Jesus Christ and that though Joseph Smith, Jesus Christ reestablished his church on the earth again. Fredy's going to be baptized next weekend :)

I absolutely love this area and the people here! I love my mission. It's the best thing I've ever chosen to do. I feel like I've learned so much and really come to know who I am and why I'm here.

Love all of you guys lots!!

Bejinhos,

Sister Ellsworth

Always Remember Him

(Elder Cummings)

This has been a wet week.  It has rained, and rained, and rained!  That has been fun for Elder Gray and I, as we both love the combination of small lakes in the road and our pickup.  There was mild flooding in town.  The rain is a blessing for all the parched farmland.

The best part of the wet week was the baptisms!  Saint and Stephen were baptized Friday night, and Saturday afternoon I went down to Fresno for John, Mai, and Harry's baptism.  They are a family I started teaching a year ago when I was still with Elder Knapton in Fresno.  They asked if I would baptize them.   It was an honor.  They said I was "their missionary," the one who really got their conversion going.  This is the first time that I have had a full family that I taught progress to baptism, complete with a father, mother, and children.  It was wonderful.  The gospel blesses families!  Mai is due to have a baby in two weeks.  That child has to be excited!  He is coming into a family that has now fully embraced the same gospel that we all embraced pre-mortally!  Who wouldn't be excited??

I have spent some time this week thinking about the covenant of baptism, specifically the importance of always remembering Christ.  Saint, Stephen, John, Mai, and Harry have now made a promise to do exactly that.

As part of this pondering, I came across D&C 45:3-5.  In these verses read like this:

Listen to him who is the advocate with the Father, who is pleading your cause before him—

Saying: Father, behold the sufferings and death of him who did no sin, in whom thou wast well pleased; behold the blood of thy Son which was shed, the blood of him whom thou gavest that thyself might be glorified;

 Wherefore, Father, spare these my brethren that believe on my name, that they may come unto me and have everlasting life.

There is a pattern here.  Christ pleads with our Heavenly Father that he will keep in mind both the sufferings and death of our Savior (the body, or the bread as represented in the sacrament) and the blood of our Savior that was shed (or the water, as represented in the sacrament).  It is after Christ's plea with God the Father to always remember the Atonement that Christ pleads that we, the sinners, can be granted everlasting life.  Our Heavenly Father can permit us, unclean as we are when left to our own merits, because he remembers and honors the Atonement.  In His perspective all of our negative attributes are swallowed up in Christ's perfection because of the covenants we have made at baptism---the witness that we are willing to take Christ's name upon us.

We all make mistakes.  We all have weaknesses and imperfections.  There are also many things that we do well.  In spite of even our best attributes, it is only through the "through the merits, and mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah" that any of us can return to the presence of God ((2 Nephi 2:8).  When we always remember Christ we remember who He is too.  We don't just remember what He did.  Because of our covenants, who He is individually is also who We are, Him and us, together. 

We in mortality tend to identify ourselves based on what we have done.  We are athletic because we were on the cross country team when we were younger.  We are musical because we have spent hours at the piano.  We are consider ourselves intelligent because of the books we have read or the schools we have attended.  We view ourselves as skilled or unskilled, as winners or losers, as righteous or wicked because of our past life experiences.  When we always remember Christ we are begin to identify ourselves with His past experiences.  We no longer are weak as we once were because who He is gives us strength and ultimately changes our character.  In our covenant relationship we are perfect in Christ.  Because of that covenant relationship we can live with God, our Father, again and live with our families in eternal joy and glory.

That is exciting.  That is what I want for everyone.

Remember Him this week!

Love,

Elder Cummings

Life and Death Experience

(Anziano Wilkinson)

So I got sick this week. Okay, so maybe it's not as bad the title makes it sound, but it was catchy so I couldn't resist! I saw it coming last Wednesday, but it really hit the next day with a wonderful mixture of coughing, fevers, headaches, and congestion. But now I've made basically a full recovery and I'm back to work as always! In the meantime I taught my companion how to play an Italian card game called Briscola, learned how to cook a super good pasta dish from Calabria, practiced my cockney accent ('ello, mate!),  watched three church history movies, and used up an entire roll of toilet paper just blowing my nose. So I'd say it was a pretty successful sick period! And yet, despite being sick, we still managed to get a decent amount of work done!

Last week there was a baptism of a man named Simone at our chapel in Muggiò and a member brought a friend to come and watch it. It was the first time he (Emmanuel is his name) had ever been to one of our church's baptisms or even heard of Mormons. We had a good conversation about the Book of Mormon and what we believe and we set up a time to see each other again. Fast forward to this week, we arrive at his apartment building and find that it looks almost like an abandoned building. One of those haunted ones that kids go into and are never heard from again haha. So not certain if we had found the right place, we called him to confirm the address only to find that we were at the right place. Moments later, Emmanuel came out to take us inside. Much to our relief, the building looked far less abandoned from the inside and was not full of ghosts and murderers like our imaginations would have liked us to believe haha.

Emmanuel is a smart guy and an honest seeker of truth, and his two friends that are sharing an apartment with him whom we also invited to join us as we taught are just the same. The Spirit was present among us as we taught the simple truths of the Restoration and Emmanuel and his friends asked all the prefect questions. After we had introduced the Book of Mormon, the friend of Emmanuel bore powerful testimony of the truth of the book and the positive effect that living the principles it teaches has had on his life. By the end, Emmanuel was asking us for a copy so that he could read it for himself. That Sunday he came to church and had a great experience and says he want to come next week.

The Lord is preparing His children all over the world and this is just one simple remainder that He has not forgotten any single one of us and He never will. It's such a wonderful thing that we have a Heavenly Father who loves us and care for our spiritual wellbeing!

Have a great week and don't be sick! It's not as cool as it sounds, trust me, I would know!

-Anziano Jake Wilkinson

Ternas Misericordiosas

(Sister Ellsworth)
This week was pretty normal. We did a  lot of looking for new investigators. I think we knocked well over 1000 doors easy.  We talked to hundreds of people and found a  couple of people that look like they have some potential. Mainly we're preparing two of our investigators for baptism at the end of this week so that's been our main focus. We did have a couple of miracles this week though! I think my favorite was having a little conversation with Fabiana, who is 14 and is the kind of girl who is so sweet and a little sassy (but everyone in Portugal is a little sassy) but hasn't had many friends. I was talking to her and she told me she was so excited for her baptism but was really nervous. I asked her why and she said something along the lines of "I want to be like you guys with lots of faith and love for everyone. You guys are such good friends to me and I'm going to miss you so much." I smiled at her and gave her a little hug and told her that she could do anything she wanted. I also told her that even big spirit giants like missionaries get scared and nervous all the time. We are always so worried about our investigators and recent converts. We are always gritting our teeth behind a smile when someone says mean things. And we are just as anxious about working with members as they are to work with us. Fabiana smiled a bit and said "I never knew that you guys were real people." I laughed and said "Yep. We are as real and imperfect as everyone else. The only difference is that we've chosen to give up our lives in the service of Heavenly Father." It was a special experience with her :)

Another little miracle that happened was that all of our investigators came to church this week! WHOOOOO! For any of you that haven't served a mission before, this is darn near impossible. We worked really hard to make sure that each person understood the importance of church. Church and scripture study aren't just things that are really nice to do. The little things really do make a difference! It's been so awesome to work with the people here!

A really sad thing happened this week... I lost my agenda. It's not super devastating, especially for the last week of the transfer, but we lots some appointments and contacts. Poop. I'm pretty sure some weirdo found it on the bus or something. I feel like a greenie again! Haha I don't know what we're doing most of the time and my  companion is the one writing all of our appointments and contacts. Oh well.... Tudo bem!

Sorry I don't have any pictures or many things to say. Next week!

Com Amor,

Sister Bellsprout

P.S. one of our investigators can't say Ellsworth so he named me Sister Bellsprout... "like the pokemon...." 

Close enough. 

Back to the basics

(Elder Cummings)

Last Monday we woke up in Fresno, took care of needed chores, cleaned up from the New Years, had a choir practice for mission conference with a member of the Quorum of the Twelve (the actual date of the visit will be the 28th of this month) and we then drove up to Merced just in time to run the transferly zone meeting.  We then jumped right back into traditional missionary work.

One of the highlights of the week was exchanges with the McKee elders.  I spent the day working with Elder Petit mostly in Atwater (a smaller town about twenty minutes north west of Merced), but we made it down to Merced for the evening.  Elder Petit is a fantastic missionary with a fantastic testimony of the Atonement.  He taught very powerfully to every less-active member we saw that day (that is where most of our work in the branch is, less-actives).  He is a very humble missionary, and in spite of that sometimes he still reminds me of myself earlier in my missionary service.  He came straight out of high school, just like I did.  Missions make you grow up fast.

One of the miracles we saw when we were working together came at 9:20pm, ten minutes before we had to be home since we weren't in a lesson (Zone leaders in the California Fresno Mission we sleep a little less and teach a little more).  Following a prompting we knocked on a strangers door.  He opened it, and willingly took a copy of the Book of Mormon.  The man said he needed more good in his life, and thanked us for coming by.  It was a contact that was meant to happen.  We handed him off as a referral to the elders who cover the Yosemite ward.

God has so many prepared children.  Most of them are prepared earlier in the day than that man was.  They need the peace and happiness that comes from living and knowing the restored gospel.

We will be having a baptism this Friday for Saint and Stephen Xiong.  The miracles keep coming.

With love,

Elder Cummings

P.S. An update on that missionary who was going to go home for medical reasons, they have determined to stay out with the goal to finish their mission.  President and Sister Clark are making sure they get the care they need and that they can now still reach their life-long goal of having served all of full-time mission.  I know that this course of action was selected in response to revelation from God to His authorized leaders, in the case of a medical release that is a General Authority Seventy with a special assignment and delegated keys from God's living prophet, Thomas S. Monson.  God truly does guide the work, and He truly does guide our lives..

Panzerotti e Miracoli

(Anziano Wilkinson)

Today was really neat in that we got to visit Milan and tour around the city center! There are endless stores and restaurants and touristy spots around it, like the Milano Duomo. There is a famous restaurant called Luini's right in the heart of the city center that makes amazing panzerotti! Panzerotti are basically small pizzas folded in half and deep fried, so you can imagine how amazing that would be haha.

As far as my new area goes, however, I am loving it! There are some really great members of the church here and some amazing investigators that we're working with. We had a really cool miracle with a family that we found this week. A few weeks prior, a man named Edward came to church out of the blue with son, Kevin. They gladly accepted the invitation to have the missionaries come over to their house and teach them, so they missionaries at the time got his contact information and address. Some time passed and the missionaries couldn't get in contact with them, so Anziano Engen and I thought we'd try to pass by the address.

We found the house and looked at the names listed on the outside of the apartment building only to not find anyone with the name Edward listed there (which is a super common thing, since no one updates those lists). So we figured we'd try to ring everyone's doorbell and ask each person if they knew the person we we're looking for. But no one seemed to know anyone by the name of Edward. We had rung about half of the doorbells when a lady and her daughter came up to the front door of the apartment building. We asked them if they knew Edward and the woman's response was basically, "Yes, that's my husband, why do you ask?". Seconds later Edward and his son came walking up to the door too. We were amazed at the timing of their arrival!

They invited us in their home and we had a great lesson about Christ and His role as our Savior. The whole family was involved and there was a special spirit present during the whole experience. It was a miracle in our eyes that we could be in the right place at the right time just to run into them and share that message. They invited us to come back this next Sunday and we are more than excited to see them again! They are such a beautiful family and a great bunch of people.

The Lord has a way of putting us in the right places at the right times if we are sensitive to the promptings of the Holy Ghost. He can make us tools in His hands to help uplift and bless the lives of others and spread joy and happiness. It's such a privilege to be called to serve His children in Italy for two years, but even if we aren't serving full-time missions we can still do our small part to brighten the world with service and compassion!

Hope you have a great week! A dopo!

-Anziano Jake Wilkinson

Happy New Year!

(Sister Ellsworth)

Hello ya'll! And a happy New Year!

This week was slow but progressive and that's all we want! Haha any sort of progress is good! Amaral has been amazing these past two weeks. He's been bringing family to church activities and sends us messages every once in a while asking if we need help teaching or to say that he absolutely loves his new life as a member of the Church. He humbly received the priesthood on Sunday and is preparing to help with the baptism of his cousin, Jenny. It has been so rewarding to see him take this new life in a stride!

New years eve was so much fun! We met with a lot of members and the whole world was going crazy with Quisomba (African music) and banging pots and pans. We actually stayed out until 10pm since our president didn't request that we return home early so we saw all sorts of crazy things! I think the best part is we were walking home and something smelled kinda funny. Our whole area smells strange but it smelled like food and burning plastic. We rounded a corner and there was this big trash can that was on fire with firefighters trying to put it out. We sat and watched the barbecue for a bit before heading home.

Fabiana was finally marked for baptism! Should be towards the end of January! She's progressing so well. When I was 14 I didn't have a clue of what was going on with religion but she's definitely a special soul. She loves that activities and other youth in the ward. 

Love all of you!

Sister Ellsworth

Happy New Year!

(Anziano Wilkinson)

I survived my first week of driving in Italy!

After a several hour train ride from Ancona to Milan, I met my new companion, Anziano Engen. Within minutes of meeting him, he informed me that he had misplaced his driver's license in the first few months of his mission... Which meant that I would be doing all of the driving... So that was a bit of a shock! I was not expecting to be the one doing most of the driving, let alone ALL of it. I had hoped to sort of ease back into it, but I guess the Lord had other plans haha.

Luckily, as soon as I sat behind the wheel I felt a little more relaxed because I realized that I had not forgotten everything. Then, after a few shaky kilometers and a safe arrival at our apartment, I was back in the swing of things. It seems that driving a car is like riding a bike; you just don't forget! It helps that Italy drives on the right side of the road just like we do and that I've been here long enough to know what all the road signs say/mean. The biggest difference that I've noticed is that Italy uses A TON of roundabouts, which can be a little tricky at times. It'll take some practice, but I'll get used to the road infrastructure here eventually.

For New Year's Eve this year my companion and I made something called Arancini, which are basically balls of rice stuffed with mozzarella and then fried. They are so good and so simple! So yeah, I guess you could say that neither of us used New Year's Eve as an occasion to kick off any new year's diet regimes haha.

2017!

(Elder Cummings)

The new year is here!

All week we have been working at the New Years.  It has been a blast.  All four of us have been working till we drop.  It has been a tremendously successful week.

Saturday it rained, something we had not prepared for.  That ended up being a great teaching moment.  As I was thinking about how we could still work effectively despite the weather and the very limited crowd a thought, or really a quote, came to my mind.  "Prayer is a form of work and is an appointed means for obtaining the highest of all blessings" (Bible Dictionary, Prayer).  That is how I started working.  I didn't bum an umbrella (right away).  I didn't spend the whole day standing in the rain (just part of it).  I prayed that people would come to us, and they did!  From across the fairgrounds people started coming directly to the booth, asking for scriptures and asking questions about the church and about Christ.  It was a clear answer to prayer and a miracle I will never forget.  God's hand is in this work.  The experience made me think of D&C 109:39.

And whatsoever city thy servants shall enter, and the people of that city receive their testimony, let thy peace and thy salvation be upon that city; that they may gather out of that city the righteous, that they may come forth to Zion, or to her stakes, the places of thine appointment, with songs of everlasting joy;

Cross referenced with Exodus 14:13-14 the promise that "[God's] salvation be upon that city" becomes more clear.  In this verse Moses is responding to the worried cries of the children of Israel as the Egyptians close in on them somewhere along the shore of the red sea.

And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will shew to you to day: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever.

The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.

God is willing to fight our battles if we are willing to believe in Him.  He did it for the Israelites and saved their lives.  He will do it for all of us in all of our battles.  He will fight for us when we obey Him.

I have seen the salvation of God in 2016.  I have confidence that 2017 will be more of the same.

Make 2017 your best year yet!

With love,

Elder Cummings