Beautiful City, Tourists, and Awesome Weather!

Hey Hey everyone!

Well, week one of my new area is accomplished! I am loving it here! It is one of the prettiest areas that I´ve had on my mission so far! My comp is super funny and I am getting along super well with him! He is another Utah boy from the city of Mapleton. We are tearin´up these streets of Tavira! 

I got to the Algarve on tuesday night after a three and a half hour bus ride from Lisbon. It was fun chatting it up with Elder Puertas and Hilton who both came down with me too! We were laughng it up and talking about all the fun times and experiences we had together. You find your best friends here on the mission!

This week was basically a week of starting over in this area. I was trying to get my bearings down and we basically are starting new trying to find investigators. We talked to a whole lot of tourists and most of them speak english. It was pretty funny because we say "Olá" to people in Portuguese then they look at us funny, so we say "Hello", then "Bonjour" then "Guten Dag" and if they don´t understand any of that we just awkwardly wave and walk away, haha. Elder Mitton is great at contacts and can get anyone laughing so it´s great.

I have met few members so far this past week! Our Branch President is a stud! We have about 16 members that come to church on a regular basis in Tavira so it is back to reality coming from Seixal of 100+ weekly! But we are going to help this place grow! 

Saturday there was a huge Algarve district youth activity here in our chapel and they asked us missionaries to help with the activities. We took some kids out and did street contacts with them and it was fun getting to know them. We had a ton of kids here who have lived in the states and are just here for vacation or family work though! It was awesome speaking english to them and hanging out. 

This sunday I gave a talk and I literally had to wing it from nothing. I was assigned to speak on Idleness but I had literally no time to prepare a talk and just spoke by the spirit. It´s pretty interesting how I´ve gotten so comfortable to just talk and testify and how easy the words just come to my mind! I wasn´t even nervous to get up there either so I am growing here on the mission!

We have a couple of people we are focusing on too. One is named Rian.. he´s brasilian, 14 years old, does kickboxing and is super cool! He looks like he is 21 years old though! Its super weird! He is the most ripped 14 year old that I have ever seen! He was going to be baptized in the past but he didn´t feel prepared so he decided to wait and hopefully we can help prepare him here soon! He wants to roll ju-jitsu with me at the chapel really bad. I´m actually scared of him though because he is like 6´2" and a total beast, hahaha! He is hoping to fight in the UFC in the future. I told him if I tap him he has to get baptized so we will see what happens :P I already challenged him to an arm wrestling contest and I miraculously won luckily!!!

We have also been helping a recent convert named Vasco help stop his bad habit of smoking. We made some plans with him and are going to talk to him daily to help him stop. We made a plan with the branch president that he will excercise with us every morning and that by the time I leave this area he will weigh 15 kilograms more than he does now. We are going to try to bulk him up! It´s going to be fun and we are going to help him receive the Melchisedek priesthood hopefully in November.   

All in all, I am loving this new area! It has definately cooled down weather wise too! The Algarve is one of the hottest places in Portugal during the summer and it seems like I just missed the heat! 75 Degree Paradise! 

I love you all! Hope this week will be great! Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father love you and live! They are waiting to help you and are just a prayer away :) 

Com Amor,

Élder Brandon Haroldsen

1. Frekin. Year.

Boas Tardes pra todos!!! Como estão?

I am great! This week was awesome! 

On the 22nd I hit my year mark! It is pretty unbelieveable that it has already been a year. I was thinking back on the weeks before my mission a year ago and everything feels like it was just yesterday. I remember how nervous I was and now here I am livin´it up loving every minute of my mission. I honestly feel like it hasn´t even been a year though because of how fast it flew by. Time truly flies when you´re having fun! There is still a ton of work for me to do here this year and I am so happy that I still have a year to become and do what I want to accomplish! 

With that being said, this awesome week was backed up with awesome investigators! Marcel and Janet are progressing and gaining a testimony! They came to church this week again for the second time and they are loving it! They have been reading and praying everyday to know if the church is true and I believe they have already received an answer and this week we are going to help them recognize it! I believe that Marcel is going to be a strong leader in the church someday, future bishop/ stake president!

We also found a new investigator names Anick. She is a single mom with a one year old baby named Leonardo. He is such a cute little boy with a little afro haha! But Anick also came to church! She accepted a baptismal date for the 6th of Aug. I know she will be baptized and I am super excited for her! 

This week we had a division with our Zone Leaders and I was paired up with Elder Wilson and my old comp. Elder Puertas!! It was so awesome being with him again for a day and a night and chatting about our past experiences! I felt like I was with my brother again!  It was so ironic how I spent my 6 month mark comps with Puertas and then I spent my year mark with him again, 6 months later! The mission is awesome when you have comps that you love and I am so grateful I had the opportunity to serve with him! One of my best friends from the mission right there!

Thats about it for the week. It is still hot as heck here and I still go to sleep sweating and wake up sweating everyday.. but I am used to it by now lol! Trials of Faith right there but when you overcome it at the end of the day it is worth it! 

Elder Wilson is still with us for one more week. He still falls asleep in the bathroom everynight and I bust up laughing when I wake up at 6ish and look over at his bed and see he´s not there haha! Super funny guy!

Other than that, thats about it for the week. The mission life is the best! I have learned so much this past year and everything is going to help me in the future. I am so grateful that my Heavenly Father has blessed me to be able to make it this far and also all the miracles he has sent to me, including being able to speak Portuguese. His hand is seen in my life everyday, even if it be in tiny, tiny ways. 

This church is true. It is his church, the Church of Jesus Christ. It has been restored just as it was prophesied in the Bible through the Prophet Joseph Smith. We have the same power and authority that Jesus Christ had here on the earth today. With this power and authority, we can perform ordinances such as baptism which are valid in God´s eyes and we can also work miracles with this authority. I have seen miracles through this authority everyday. 

I love this gospel. I love my Heavenly Father and my Savior Jesus Christ. They live and they are so eager to help and bless us if we turn to them! I can feel their love for me especially when I struggle and I hope you guys do too because their love is real and it is infinite. 

Have a wonderful week! 

Elder Haroldsen 

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Élder Brandon Haroldsen

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Missão Portugal Lisboa

Rua Jorge Barradas Nº14C

1500-370 Benfica, Lisboa

Portugal

Triple!

Hello everyone!!

I don´t have very much time to email today because we took a long time in Lisbon but I will write about the important things that happened this week!

So we are now in a tri-panionship! The Elders who were in Seixal A (Elder Katipunan and Wilson) got changed up a little. Katipunan got a call saying that there was an emergency transfer happening because an elder had to go home with a back injury. So Katipunan got shipped off and Wilson came to join the homies here in Seixal B. We had to combine the areas for the rest of the transfer and our area is HUGEEEEE!!! 

This week was an explosion in our numbers and the people we found! We found a family named Marcel, Janet, Paris, and Aminachi. Marcel is from Nigeria and doesn´t speak portuguese so we teach him in english but his wife speaks Portuguese and no english so we switch off languages! We found him on a street contact and we taught him and his fam the first lesson and it went super well!! They all four came to church this week too!! Paris is 7 and aminachi is 18 months. Cute elect family!! We will be marking them for baptism this week and I´m super excited for them! 

We also met Ladí, the cousin of our recent convert. She has a very difficult life and she was touched by our message. She cried and said she knows it is God´s true church. We threw out a baptismal goal for the 30th of July and we are helping her and her 8 year old son José be baptised on that day! They both came to church too! Super exciting!

We should have a ton of baptisms in the coming weeks! I am super excited to see what the Lord blesses us with! He is so good! 

Anyways I have to go.. but I wanted to end with a funny story this week. So now that we are in a tri-panionship things have gotten quite interesting. Everything from buying more food to teaching in different ways because there are three of us now has changed. Elder Wilson is hilarious. He gets me to laugh all day long lol.. anyways, one night I got in bed after praying and noticed that Elder Wilson was still praying. I was thinking holy cow this guy prays for a long time! Then I fell asleep and woke up 2 hours later and looked over and saw the guy still on his knees praying. I was like no way!! how??.. We wake up in the morning and I hit him up about it. He started laughing and tells me that he fell asleep kneeling down and woke up at about 4 am still asleep on his knees!! WHATTTT?!?! He was asleep on his knees for like 5 hrs! I couldn´t stop laughing haha. Then to make things even funnier, he falls asleep on the toilet every. single. night. Guarenteed. He sits on the toilet for like 5 hrs every night and falls asleep and then wakes up and realizes he fell asleep. We are always joking that now that he moved in with us he doesn´t even need a bed, he can pray for 4 hrs then finish off the night on the toilet!! classic!!

Anyways, I hope you all have a great week. Miss you all!!

Com Amor, 

Elder Haroldsen

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Élder Brandon Haroldsen

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Missão Portugal Lisboa

Rua Jorge Barradas Nº14C

1500-370 Benfica, Lisboa

Portugal

19.

Hello hello!!

Thank you to EVERYONE who sent me emails for my birthday this past week!!! I received the most emails this week than any week of my mission so far! I felt super loved as I read everyone´s emails today :) 

Well, I am super short on time today because I spent a little too much time deciding which suit I was gonna buy at the mall today!! I am super excited to wear it because it is a swagged out european suit. Therefore, I only have about 30 min to email today unfortunately... 

BUT this week was a great one! I am getting to know the area and some of the members relatively well now and I am loving it! My comp. and I become better and better friends every day too. My birthday went great! We went to the mall to eat lunch which was buffet Pizza Hut. We always have a competition and I was only able to eat 10 and then 11 today. I also received a call from my mission president and his wife wishing me a happy birthday. That night we had a lesson with our investigator Elsa and she had remembered my bday and bought juice and doughnuts for me! I was so happy and grateful! She is so nice and super elect. We have her marked for baptism this saturday the 28th of May and we are going to work hard preparing her this week. I am super excited for her to make this change in her life to follow our Savior Jesus Christ! 

THEN I received a super special bday present this weekend. On friday we had a mission conference with Elder David A. Bednar, an Apostle of the Lord! I got to sit about 10 feet away from him and he was so powerful! I loved it so much and he really motivated me by his powerful testimony and witness of the Savior Jesus Christ. One thing that really stuck out to me was when he said, "Revelation is a conclusion and almost never has an explaination... when we receive revelation to act upon something from the Holy Ghost, the Lord lmost never explains why he wants us to do it. We just need to trust that the revelation is coming from our Loving Heavenly Father and do it." Then the stake of Setubal had the opportunity to have Elder Bednar speak to them on sunday and I was there too!! Our investigator Elsa showed up and the talk he gave was directed perfectly for her as an investigator of the church. Elder Bednar explained how this is the only true church of Jesus Christ on all the face of the earth and explained the restoration is detail. The spirit was SO strong! One quote that I loved that he said on sunday was, "When Christ is hungry, he feeds other people. When he is suffering pain, he heals others. Through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we can turn out to serve others and be more like HIM." 

I was touched this weekend hearing from an Apostle of the Lord. I know he is a true witness of Him. I know without a doubt that this is the only church that will help us be together forever as families. This church is the same orginazation that Christ established. It is all true. I know this and all of you can know it for yourselves through the help of the missionaries like me. 

I am so grateful for all of you and the love you show me. May the Lord bless all of you and your families! 

p.s. sorry I am not writing individual emails this week as I am on a public computer and I have about 5 min left.

Com Amor para sempre!

Élder Brandon Haroldsen 

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Élder Brandon Michael Haroldsen

Missão Portugal Lisboa 

Rua Jorge Barradas Nº 14C

1500-370 Benfica, Lisboa

Portugal 

PORTUGAL OR AFRICA

WHATUPPP from Continental Portugal! 

This week went really fast like always! I flew in tuesday and have been getting to know the area ever since. Seixal is hugeee. So many people too! But I´m finally starting to catch on to the different roads. Here in a couple of weeks I´ll have it all down I hope. There are a TON of people from Africa here. They tend to speak Creole sometimes when they don´t want us to understand and it drives me crazy lol. But getting to know the African culture has really opened my eyes and helped me be more humble. 

My comp. is a pretty cool guy. He is from Oregon so we are both west coast kids. We get along well and we are going to baptize some elects together! 

Basically upon arriving here, we have no investigators. It has been difficult for me to help my comp. out finding people because I have no idea who anybody is or where we are even at. BUT we already had our first sunday here together! Man this ward is awesome! I came from the Azores with a branch of about 6 members to this ward with an attendance of more than 100 people! I felt like I was in my ward back home... super different. 

This saturday we knocked on this lady´s door named Elsa that the missionaries had contacted about 2 weeks ago. They had passed by like 4 times and she always said she didn´t have time so they dropped her. We decided to knock her door one more time and she was home! We told her we had church the next day at 9:30 and that we could walk with her to church. She said she would go so we were excited! Then sunday morning we rung her doorbell and no answer.. I felt dissapointed but had the feeling to not lose hope. So like 3 min. later we knocked again and she started coming out all dressed up for church! She was like,"I thought you guys had forgotten about me!" We walked to church with her and got to know her. She is African from Angola and is visiting her sister here in Portugal until mid July. She is super nice and turns out she absolutely loved church! She was so happy that she went and she said she is planning on going every week. On the walk home we talked to her about baptism and she said that she would be intrested! She said she wants to find a chapel in Angola and go there too! We are going by her house tonight with faith and power! The Lord is always preparing elects! 

Anyways..thats about it for the week. We have a mall in our area so we went there for Pday today and I got some new pants and McDonalds for the first time in 5 months. Bomb.com! 

My mission is soooo awesome. I am learning a lot and growing in testimony and power. I have learned to rely on my Heavenly Father for everything and leaving things in his hands. I know with 100% of my heart that this is Jesus Christs´ true church, the same church he established on this earth himself. I have seen miracles performed by the authority and power of the priesthood. The priesthood is real and can only be found in this church. The best part about this all is that we can know for ourselves! 

This church is real and true. Families can be together forever and this is the goal in the end. 

I love you all and I hope that you have an amazing week! 

Teu Élder Preferido,

Élder Brandon Haroldsen 

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Élder Brandon Michael Haroldsen

Missão Portugal Lisboa 

Rua Jorge Barradas Nº 14C

1500-370 Benfica, Lisboa

Portugal 

TRANSFERS!!! 7/16: Leaving the Jungle

What up what up! 

Well we got transfer calls last night and I am leaving the island :( I was really sad to hear that because I love this place and I have come to love the people here but I am also excited to learn a new area and more people! My new area is across the bay from Lisbon and it is called Seixal ("Say-shaul"). I will be serving with Elder Hinkey. I met him on a division when I went to the other island and he is a really cool guy so I am excited! I fly out of this place tomorrow morning at 8 amand I land in Lisbon at 10 fresh to start a new week in a new area! 

This week was another tough week. We knocked countless doors and walked countless hours. We found some superrr awesome people through our labors tho! Her name is Sandra and she has two boys named Alexandre and Samuel. They even came to church and loved it! Elder Thomas and his new comp. are going to baptize her forsure! 

Other than that, I got to skype my family yesterday!! It is so crazy how fast the time you skype feels like it flies. I felt like I had just started when my time was up lol. But it was super cool seeing them and laughing with them. My brother Kyle is all grown up! Crazy crazy crazy! 

Today since it was my last pday here we went to Burger King in Angra with a member named Delcio and ate the only fast food on the island! I am going to miss that guy! 

Tonight I will go by members houses to say my goodbyes and pack my suitcase. 

Anyways.. I hope all the mothers had a great mothers day. I am grateful that my Father in Heaven has given me the opportunity to have two wonderful mothers. I am so happy that I was given that blessing and I love them both! Because of my Savior Jesus Christ I will be with them forever. 

I love you guys! I´m so glad that I get to be a missionary! Life is awesome. In Jesus Christ I have found new life! I know that he lives and this church is true! 

I hope everyone has a great week!

Com bastante amor,

Élder Brandon Haroldsen 

 

Élder Brandon Michael Haroldsen

Missão Portugal Lisboa 

Rua Jorge Barradas Nº 14C

1500-370 Benfica, Lisboa

Portugal 

It´s Gonna´ Be A Long Hot Summer

What up homies!!!

It´s already May! And along with it only being May, it´s already super hot some days here! With this weather I´m already getting a sleeve, collar, and watch tan! This summer is going to be rough.

This week was another week of miles and miles of walking. My legs have never been more in shape for walking than they are now haha. My Ecco Shoes are starting to get beat up! My dad and I bought the same shoes on the same day and we are going to compare them when I get home and see what two years of walking everyday does to them. 

We met with several investigators this week and saw some progress but not much. We found out that our investigator Michael from Brazil isn´t married and it´s going to be a process to be able to get them married. We are going to keep pushing and helping him until that day.

We found a new investigator named Jorge this week! He is married to a lady named Conceição who is a less active for more than 25 years. We went over this week and started teaching them both and testifying about everything and how their lives would be blessed if they took these steps. They both showed up this sunday! The members of our branch were surprised because she hadn´t been in so long! We were pumped with that!

The Bull runs have started but haven´t come to Praia yet! Hopefully I will get to see one maybe next pday. Transfers are also next week and I am pretty sure that I will be staying at least one more and hitting six months on the island. It´s crazy because it feels like I just got here having no idea where I was and now I know the area exteremely well.

I am so grateful for all of the people who are still emailing me! As you get older in the mission you get less and less emails every week so I am glad I still have people writing me. I hope to respond to everyone every week but I always end up running out of time. 

I just want to end with a missionary thought...

Last week my Aunt Betsy wrote me an email and she told me that my cousin, McKay, has been reading the Book of Mormon with the goal of finishing it for the first time all the way through. She said that McKay came up to her super excited and told her that he had finished reading the book cover to cover and he had done what Moroni said to do. She asked him how he felt and he said, " I cried of happiness, so I know it´s true."

When I read that email I teared up because one, I remembered when I received a testimony that the Book of Mormon was true just like McKay did and I myself also cried of happiness and two, that is exactly why I am serving a mission, to have people know for themselves that these things are true, and it was awesome to know that my 9 year old cousin had received a witness for himself. I´m super proud of you McKay!

I hope you all have a great week. Keep pushing forward and trust in Heavenly Father just like I am. He will never let you fall.

Com Muito Amor,

Élder Brandon Haroldsen

“Don't you quit. You keep walking, you keep trying, there is help and happiness ahead. Some blessings come soon. Some come late. Some don't come until heaven. But for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, they come. It will be alright in the end. Trust God and believe in Good Things to Come.”

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Élder Brandon Michael Haroldsen

Missão Portugal Lisboa 

Rua Jorge Barradas Nº 14C

1500-370 Benfica, Lisboa

Portugal