Costa da Caparica, Portugal!

Olá meus queridos amigos e querida família, 

Another week down!! The time flies when you are busy each and every day! This week has basically been just like any other week. We have been struggling finding people to teach in Costa da Caparica, and all of our investigators are in Monte da Caparica, about 30 minutes away. Its harder here because the church is in Costa and the investigators find it hard to travel 30 minutes to get to church. 

The ward we are in is about 40 members and we have a couple stud returned missionaries that have really started to help us out this week. We went with one of them yesterday, sunday, to visit this investigator named Jannette. She is 17 and shes from somewhere in Africa. We have been over there a couple times and her younger brothers go crazy so its hard to teach and the mom is never there. This sunday the mom was there and Francisco helped out with the younger boys by playing with them in their room. Anyways, we taught the third lesson, The Gospel of Jesus Christ and really emphasized baptism. I told her all things we accomplish are accomplished by setting goals so we tried to mark her for baptism on November 22. She said she would keep praying, but she doesnt feel like shes received an answer yet. Her mom promised to come to church along with jannette this sunday so Im excited about that! We are going to help them paint the inside of their apartment after church haha so im excited about that too.

This sunday the bishop came up to us and asked if we could speak 5 min before church starts and we were like ummmm shoot! So we got up there and shared a scripture and bore our testimonies. Somehow I was able to wing out a 7 minute talk all in portuguese out of the top of my head! I surprised myself lol.

I forgot to mention last week, but they announced the Cornerstone laying on the Portugal, Lisbon temple on sat. Dec 5th!! I think we are going to get to go!!! Its across the river(the bay) and it going to be such a cool experience! They are saying the Lisbon Temple is going to be the second most expensive to build temple in the world! Its going to be so awesome to be able to see that temple from across the bay when it is finished! I am super excited for this great blessing for the people of Portugal! 

Today was a pretty fun pday as usual. We spent the night as a district in Almada and hung out last night then woke up this morning to go out and play some volleyball/ go to the mall again. There is a store here that is exactly like best buy at the mall and they have all the new electronics and games and stuff. Its crazy looking at all the new iphones, tvs and games that have come out recently. Then we went to the pizza hut buffet where we always have a competition to see who can eat the most pizzas. I was only able to eat 10 and Hilton ate 13.. But the record in the mission is 42!!! I dont know how thats possible because I almost threw up with just 10 haha. 

This week was pretty good but this next week should be better. ALways looking forward to improve!! I strive to be better each and every day no matter how hard it is. 

I am so glad for my great calling as a missionary for the Lord Jesus Christ. All I have to worry about is serving others and helping them come unto Christ!! But to be a missionary you dont need a white shirt and plaque. Every single one of you can be a missionary. It wasnt until I got out here that I realized how important members are for missionaries and accomplishing the Lords work. When we go out with the missionaries, the investigator already has a friend and someone they can look up to in the church. This is why member missionary work is so important, because the members in the individual wards are what keep everything going! The missionaries will everntually leave the area and the investigator needs a friend at church! So be a missionary! Serve others! Open your mouths and share this wonderful gospel with everyone you know! 

I hope you all have a great week and have a great halloween with your families! Eat lots of good American candy for me!!! :) 

Eu os amo a cada um de vocês! Tenham uma boa semana!! Sejam melhor cada dia! 

-- 

Élder Brandon Michael Haroldsen

A Igreja De Jesus Cristo Dos Santos Dos Últimos Dias 

Missão Portugal Lisboa 

Rua Jorge Barradas Nº 14C

1500-370 Benfica, Lisboa

Portugal 

YO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Olá meus queridos amigos e família!,

Como vai? Tudo bem?

Whats up y'all? How are you all doing? I am doing pretty good! We had a chill week this week. My comp. had an ingrown townail that he had to get operated on so he went to the hospital and then stayed at the mission home.. meanwhile I went on a split with another Elder. He worked the heck out of me! haha But on that split we were able to mark a lady for baptism and after we did the elder was like how did we do that!? we have been trying to mark her forever! I was feeling the spirit strong!

After that day, we went back to our apartment and just basically hung out while my comp rested his foot. He can barely walk! So I just wrote letters and layed down lol Im ready to get back out and work!

The weather here is still beautiful! Its such a nice area. We have a couple of people we are starting to teach and hopefully they begin progressing this week!! Im excited to see the fruites of our labors!

On the way back home from the mission home, the AP's gave us a ride in their car. It was their p-day (they have pday on fridays) and they were like..., "You know president Tavares was allowed to listen to regular music on his pdays on his mission just to pump the elders up for the rest of the week?.. i was like oh really? hes lucky! well they were like hes allowing us to do the same! as long as it doesnt have a bad message or bad words we can listen to any songs on pday." So they turned on taylor swift and they were all amazed at the song shake it off because they had never heard it before the mish haha Im super stoked at this new rule though! And nobody knows yet but us and the AP,s...

Today was a fun pday. We went to the mall and its just like the mall in the US. Its super huge!!!! And it has alot of the same stores. I was missing good old cali! We also got to eat mcdonalds and it tasted exactly the same as the States!!! bomb.com

We walked out on the beach today to take some cool pics with our nametags. Its so nice out there!!!

Well thats about all we did this week. Hopefully this week picks up and gets busy. 

Always remember who you are and try your best in no matter what you do. I love and miss you all. Have a great week!!! 

Fica fixe meus amigos e sempre seja melhor cada dia!!! 

-- 

Élder Brandon Michael Haroldsen

A Igreja De Jesus Cristo Dos Santos Dos Últimos Dias 

Transfer day is here!

Hello everybody! I am emailing a little bit later today because today starts the first day of my second transfer.. and I got transferred to the Lisbon area!! Its called Costa de Caprica and its across the bay from Lisbon. I was really nervous to find out where I was going last night and all this morning because I had no idea what it was going to be like... but it is BEAUTIFUL!!! I took the two hour bus ride with Elder Lee to meet up with my new trainer and Elder Fletcher. Fletch is getting trained in Évora now!! I got to see him and it was so awesome!

My new companion is named Elder Brett Hilton.. hes a Utah boy and this is his 6th transfer on the mish so hes not far in either. This guy is so awesome though. Hes super hilarious and I can tell we are going to have a great time together.

This new area is huge!!! We took a 35 min bus ride from one side to the other just now. We have to get a bus pass as we will be using it alot. way different than evora!!We are at the church right now and this church i guess used to be a mansion house that the church bought. its two stories and its hugeeeee!!!! Its so different from the U.S.

I just got done dropping my bags off at the apartment and my comp was like... you want to see the beach? we walk out, walk to the back of the house, up a hill and bam its the beach... its like a 10 second walk!!! The beach reminds me of pismo beach. Its super pretty. We then walked 10 min down the beach to get to church to email. The weather is perfect.. I am in paradise!!!

This past week has been stormy weather and back in Évora last monday Elder Lee and I got caught in the biggest rainstorm of my life!!! We were like 2 miles from our house and it starts sprinkling and we were like oh its fine, we can go visit this lady really quick.. then the drops started getting bigger and falling faster. Next thing you know we were stuck in the rain with nowhere to go. The wind picked up and the streets were flooding super fast. We were soaked to the bone!!! We ran to a ladys hopuse in water up to my ankles just to find she wasnt home, just her 13yr old daughter... i felt like i was standing in the shower with all my clothes!! haha it was a rough day. 

This week we got moved from the Hobbit house that was 500 years old with no lights to a brand new apartment. It was super nice having places to sit to study and not having to study on a stool with no table to eat or study. now we got our own study desk each and a huge table for all 4 of us. It was super nice and i unpacked just to repack lol

Hawerth dissapeared again. It was sad. But we planted a seed. He really felt the spirit but he just never accepted to follow the promptings. Hopefully he gets baptized there soon!!!

We shall see how this week goes. Ill keep you all posted next week.

Once again, thank you for all your love, support, and prayers. I am having the time of my life here on the Lord's errand. 

Fica fixe amigos

-- 

Elder Brandon Michael Haroldsen

A Igreja De Jesus Cristo Dos Santos Dos Ultimos Dias 

"The only easy day was yesterday" US NAVY SEALS

What up friends and family!?

Im doing pretty good. Another week gone by! It flew by really fast!

This week has been pretty difficult. We kind of lost all of our potentials so we are basically starting from the bottom again. We are finding new people to teach almost daily though! But I have faith we will find more this week.

This week has been full of crazy things. One day we were walking down one of these tight residential alleyways and people can drive down them but they only have like 2 ft of clearance on the sides of the car. So we were walking and here comes this van and we had just turned the corner to that oncoming van that was coming real slow. So we moved against the wall by the corner where we had just turned to give him some room. Well the guy goes to turn left where we had just come from but he didnt have room to make a wide turn and the back half of the car started coming closer and closer as he turned and then i got pinned against the car and the wall and my shoulder started getting crushed and i dented the side of the car with my body that had just gotten smashed. So we started banging on the side of the van and the guy stopped because he would have scraped the wall. so he starts reversing and almost runs over my dang foot!!!! It was bad!!! and we looked at the guy and he just glared at us as he drove off....luckily  the dent popped back out lol

Then another unlucky day i was just randomly walking and my arm was resting on my bag hanging from my shoulder and i feel like this sting and it felt like i got a splinter from my bag in my arm and i got to look and it started hurting like crazy as i hit this wasp off my arm!! oh my gosh it stung so bad!! it got all swollen and red and my comp was like if it gets worse we are prob going to have to go to the ER.. luckily it didnt and I was fine. 

We are trying our best here in Portugal. Talking to absolutely everyone we see. Hopefully we see the fruits of our labor soon!! My portuguese has improved alot. I can understand 95% or more of every conversation now and i can respond back :)

Oh! I also gave my first talk in sacrament meeting this past week in sacrament mtg. It was a 10 min talk and I shared the lion king story. It was super hard in portuguese!! 

Thank you for all the prayers and support from back home. I am so glad i have people like you. 

have a great week!!

Tentam de ser os melhores exemplos para as outras pessoas cada dia de sua vida!! 

Amo cada um de vocês 

-- 

Elder Brandon Michael Haroldsen

A Igreja De Jesus Cristo Dos Santos Dos Ultimos Dias 

Olá Amigos e familia!!!

Como que vocês estão? Tudo bem? 

Well its pday again! Its crazy how fast the week flew by! This week has been pretty good. I am slowly but surely getting to my way around evora. All of the streets look the same though in most areas and its super easy to get lost! haha. We are working hard every day. I get home at night and kick off my shoes because my feet are so tired and i get to bed as fast as i can. You realize how important sleep is on your mission thats forsure!!

Eu posso entender mais e mais a língua de português cada dia. I can understand more and more portuguese every day. The thing we do most is walk around the streets and talk to everyone who walks past. basically its like olá, tudo bem? como se chama senhor? and introduce who we are and what we are doing and try to schedule an appointment at their house. As i said last week, the president made it a goal for the mission to get at least 20 street contacts like that every day. we get way over that every day haha last wednesday we hit 45. It was a super busy day. But on the weekends it seems like nobody is home or on the streets. Yesterday it was cloudy and started raining a little and it reminded me of the walking dead on the streets because nobody at all way outside. it was creepy.

we have had a rough week as far as investigators. all of the people we has been hoping would progress said we couldnt come back. We taught a girl named joanna and she accepted our message and said she would be baptized if God answered her prayer to see if this church is true. Well we went back a couple days later and her dad was like what are you trying to date my daughter? he threatened to call the cops on us!! crazy portuguese guy! so we had to give up on her.

the other night it was about 9:30 (we dont have to be back in the apartment until 9:30or 10 if we are in a lesson and we dont wake up until 7am which is nice) anyways it was night and we were walking back to our tiny house and in this alleyway theres a guy against the wall and he turns and said for us to wait.. me and my comp look at each other and we are like dude lets go hurry! and we start walking fast down the road and he runs after us and is like can you tell me about your church? i just need to talk to somebody because i want to kill myself.. anyways we talked and it was good but you could tell that guy was drunk out of his mind. i thought he was going to jump out in front of a car because he couldnt stop moving. he could barely walk haha. 

then the same thing happened the next night with another drunk guy. This place is creepy at night!

we have some people who are ready for baptism but need to be married first. hopefully they get married soon so we can dunk them!!! we have a family home evening tonight with them. Sadly no golden investigators yet!

Today i think we are going to go tour this huge ancient church thing. its super old looking. Its about 75 degrees over cast right now.. man i am sure suffering in this weather!! hahaha 

Serving a mission is hard and i miss you guys but its the best decision i have made in my life. I am becoming the missionary God needs me to be. 

Hope you all have a great week. Always remember who you are, and never forget that God is always there for you. 

love you all

com muito amor 

-- 

Élder Brandon Michael Haroldsen

A Igreja De Jesus Cristo Dos Santos Dos Últimos Dias 

OLA!

What up friends and family?! How are you all? Hows the United States?

Well I am here in PORTUGAL!!! ITS SO SO SO AMAZING!!! I love my mission so much!

So ill start by explaining everything that has happened this past week.

We left the MTC at 3:30AM. It was so hard to wake up after 3 hrs of sleep. We almost missed the time to leave because we slept through the alarm we had set for 2AM but luckily an Elder woke up and woke us all up at 3.. so we got dressed and ready in the dark, half asleep. We then got on a bus that took alot of us missionaries to a train station kinda by the girls house in Provo. It was sad to drive down the street and see the pawn shop and know we are so close to the house. So I fell asleep on the 45 min train ride to the SLC Airport. Then we had to check into the computers at the airport and my bags weighed 50lbs and 52lbs.. hopefully they didnt charge my credit card for a heavy bag haha. I then had a little bit of time to call my parents and had to go because we almost missed our flight. We then flew 4.5 hrs to JFK Airport in New York. The airport was huge! But it was in the middle of nowhere so we didnt see any buildings. The people there were SUPER RUDE! It was so different and crazy. So we were only there for like an hour and i had to get some food because I was starving. This is where i did my first contact. It was with a lady from Africa and she asked what we were doing and how our church was different from others. We explained the restoration of the Church and the priesthood and basically after that she just wanted to argue. The payphones wernt working to i was like i guess ill just call from France. So we flew 7.5 hrs and finally got to france. Longest flight ever just sitting there not being able to watch movies like American Sniper, Inside Out, or Fast and Furious 7 haha. Then in france the payphones were all in french and i couldnt understand and so i couldnt call. Sorry to all who were expecting a call!! We then flew 2 hrs to Portugal.. i slept again and woke up as we were flying over Lisbon. it was so amazing!!! When we landed some elders had lost their bags so they waited and the rest of us went down to meet the President and his AP´s. They were all waving Portugal flags and they were all super excited. It was so cool!! They presidents wife was taking pics of us on her ipad and it reminded me of home lol. then we went to meet our companions at the mission home and ate lunch and had interviewa with President Tavares. My companion is named elder eric lee from utah. He is a super cool guy and he speaks portuguese really well. President Tavares is such a wonderful guy!!! he reminds me exactly of tio vinicio in Ecuador. And his wife is just like yorye haha. The first night we got assigned to our areas. I got assigned to a small city called Évora. It is a new area for my comp and me. we are opening this area and taking the south side. There are two other elders on the north side. Our house is extremely small. there is no closets or anything so my stuff is still in my suitcase. There is an AC machine only in the room and the rest of the house is super hot. It is two stories but trust me its tiny tiny. especially for the four of us. We are a part of a small branch here in Évora. there is no leadership, so we are conducting every meeting. There are only about 12 active members on a good day. 

We are working hard though. President Tavares promised that if we make 20street contacts every day as a companionship, we will baptize this transfer. yesterday we got 30. It was a lot of work but we just talked to everybody we saw. Since we are both new, we are trying to figure out the area. This city is probably one of the oldest in portugal. its allllll cobblestone streets. and they are rough rocks sticking out so its tiring to walk on.. my feet kill by the end of the day!!

we have found a couple of people that seem intrested in the church. hopefully we can mark them down for a baptismal date. 

since there are only a few members, most meals are on our own.. ham and cheese sandwiches or cereal basically. yeah we go hungry. but thats okay. we have had two meals at members houses. it was just rice (super good) chicken salad and soup. not that exciting haha. my pants are already starting to fit me big cause we have been walking alot which is good!!! 

the weather is sometimes a little warm here but in the mornings and nights its like 70 degrees.. so nice!! when i got to lisbon it felt like perfect beach weather. This place reminds me alot of ecuador. its super similar. 

My portuguese is decent haha but its so hard to understand real people. their accent is crazy and when i bore my testimony in church yesterday they said i have a spanish accent when i speak portuguese. better that sounding like a gringo!!! 

ill let you all know how this week goes. peace out America

-- 

Elder Brandon Michael Haroldsen

A Igreja De Jesus Cristo Dos Santos Dos Ultimos Dias 

PEACE OUT AMERICA

Hello everybody! I hope you all had a great week. My last week here at the MTC was super uplifting and wonderful. I have felt the love God has for me and that he has prepared me to leave on this great journey. Today is my last pday in preparation for my trip which starts at 3:30 AM tomorrow morning. I am washing all my clothes and getting ready to pack everything soon! Its so crazy that I'm leaving this place already. It seems like yesterday I was getting dropped off at the curb and saying goodbye to all of you. 

I feel like I am as ready as ever. My Portuguese is great. My companion thinks that there's a chance that I will be better than my trainer if he isn't a native portuguese speaker. He's crazy haha.

Yesterday one of my best friends, Elder Petersen, was shipped off to Mozambique, Africa Portuguese speaking. Before he left he requested that all the Elders in my district offer him a blessing. As I stood in that circle I felt the power of God. I felt the spirit so strong and tears started rolling down my cheeks. We were all crying saying goodbye to this elder but it was a great experience. I truly felt like a disciple of Jesus Christ.

I want all of you to know how much love I have for my savior Jesus Christ. I know he lives. I know that he leads his church, and that this is his church. I know that without a doubt. He loves you beyond your imagination. He loves you so much that he took upon himself every single pain, sickness, sorrow, or hard experience you have every or will ever go through. He went so much pain that he trembled and bled for every pore, begging Heavenly Father to take away the pain and if there was any other less excruciating way. He did this because he loves you. He knows everything you are going through, and he is there to comfort you. As a true Representative of Jesus Christ, I invite you to come unto him. COME UNTO CHRIST, and by his grace be made holy again. 

From today on I will be communicating by pretty much only email as letters will take a while to get there and back. 

Eu amo voces com tudo meu coracao. (Sorry I can't type portuguese accents on this computer.)

-- 

Elder Brandon Michael Haroldsen

A Igreja De Jesus Cristo Dos Santos Dos Ultimos Dias