SURVIVING HURRICANE ALEX

Hey everyone!

Well as many of you have probably heard, the Eastern Atlantic Ocean was hit by a hurricane this past week and they named it "Hurricane Alex" as it was the first hurricane of the year. According to the radars, it was going to hit the Azore islands straight on and all of the Portuguese people were freaking out making a huge deal out of the situation. The island was in a red zone meaning nobody was supposed to go outside due to the strong winds and intense rain. The hurricane wasn´t supposed to hit until 4 am so we didn´t really get to see how strong the winds really were but it was really windy that night. When we woke up in the morning it was pouring rain and the wind made the rain seem like it was falling completely sideways. It was crazy! But then at about noon the rain stopped and the sun started coming out. Turns out that the hurricane hit about 20km away from the island so we just got some wind and rain, nothing too bad. But it was my first time being in a Hurricane! 

This past week we started seeing some sucess. We got a ride out to a small city named Lajes which is about 5 miles away from Praia. We had been planning on going out there to visit this girl but couldnt because of the rain and our lack of a car. But we got a ride from some senior missionaries serving in Angra. We walked out there once and it was a longggg ways! Anyways, this girl is named Soraiah. She had been taught by the missionaries in the past and had been to church many times. She wanted to get baptized but since she was only 17, her parents wouldn't give her prermission. She then moved to the island of Pico for work for the next two years and lost contact with the elders. well she came back! She let us in on our first visit and we got to know her a little and asked about what the missionaries taught her in the past. She said she really liked the Church of Jesus Christ because she felt the spirit here and she felt like it was one big family. We then started talking about baptism and that now that shes 19, she can choose to be baptized on her own. We marked her for baptism this sunday, Jan 24th and she told us she would come to church with us yesterday but unfortunately she didnt show up and didnt answer our calls. So we will see. We are going to pass by her house tomorrow again and see what happened. She can still be baptized this sunday!! We are praying a lot for her. Shes awesome! 

This week I will be flying back to Lisbon on the 20th to receive my recidency card to be legal here, and I will be seeing everyone from the MTC who came out with me! I then fly back to the Azores on the 21st. Then on the 26th we have zone conf. which is on another island so my comp and I will be flying to the island of São Miguel for that. A lot of flying in the next week! Im not too excited for that lol.

Since we have an American member in our branch, he doesnt understand any Portuguese, so we translate for him the same way we do in the states, except the headsets are way more cool here. But my comp. plays the piano for sacrament mtg. so i am the one translating for him. Its really fun and its a really good practice for me! carrying on my dads tradition of translating haha. 

Well, thats about it for the week. It was a fun quick week! 

Hope you are all doing good. Thanks for all the emails and support! Eu vos amo! 

--------

Élder Brandon Michael Haroldsen

Missão Portugal Lisboa 

Rua Jorge Barradas Nº 14C

1500-370 Benfica, Lisboa

Portugal 

OLÁ DA PRAIA DA VITÓRIA!

Hello everybody!

What´s up? How are things back home? 

This week was awesome. I flew out for the island on Tuesday morning and arrived on Terceira island two hours later. As soon as we started flying in everything looked soo different from Lisbon. Green EVERYWHERE and a lot of farmland. They say there are more coows than people on the island.

The weather is crazy. A lot of unpredictable rain coming from the Atlantic ocean almost everyday. It is also extremely windy! I guess a couple weeks ago a hurricane passed by this island and hit the island of São Jorge. We woke up the other night because the wind was hitting the windows so hard. Crazy!! 

I love it here. It is gorgeous!! Unlike anything I have ever seen. Everywhere you look you see small farms of green alfalfa separated by lava rock fences the people built and cows inside.

The portuguese accent here is different than in Lisbon. It is super difficult to understand! My first day here felt like the first day on my mission again. They say the accent in st. jorge is even harder to understand and I have met a couple of people from there and I completely agree. I feel like they aren´t even speaking portuguese haha.

The members are awesome here. There aren´t many, but they love to help the missionaries. We have had two dinners in less than a week already!! 

There are also some other differences between here and Lisbon those being: They have concrete sidewalk here!!, they sell mac and cheese AND Dr. Pepper/ Mtn. Dew!, and they have an American base here so a lot of people are American and know english.

We have a lot of potential for baptisms here. There are a lot of people we are teaching. This past week we had the most lessons out of the whole zone!

This past week we were walking through pouring rain and we were soaking wet walking home when we look over and these guys were moving these cows out of the field and they were just whistling and the cows were following the guy on the tractor. I thought that was crazy and then the guy starts driving the tractor on the main road and here come the cows right behing him! They walked the road through all the busy traffic almost stepping on us! I was like wow.. we would never see anything like this in America!! I couldnt get any pics unfortunately because it was pouring rain and I didnt want to ruin my camera. 

The first week of Feb. they have a thing here called carnaval.. which is a week of water aka getting everyone wet for fun. So they told us missionaries to watch out and be careful. I have a feeling we are going to be a big target hahaha.

Every year starting in May they do bull runs here on the streets and also on the beach. A member was showing us videos and they were running 6 huge bulls down the middle of the town with no rope or anything! and people were getting jacked up! It was so crazy!! I hope i can be here for that! Look up the videos.. "Praia da Vitoria Touradas", and also "Marradas" 

I am loving this island. It is incredible and I wish you all could experience it with me!

Hope you have a great week!! 

Love you all!!

-------

Élder Brandon Michael Haroldsen

Missão Portugal Lisboa 

Rua Jorge Barradas Nº 14C

1500-370 Benfica, Lisboa

Portugal 

TRANSFERS TRANSFERS TRANSFERS #4/16

Sup everybody! Happy 2016!! Hope you all had a wonderful new year back at home.

This week was the last week of the transfer and we finished out the week with fire! We had the best week that we had had in 12 weeks! I was glad that we finished out strong and we able to find a ton of new investigators!

This past week President Tavares changed some things up in our mission. Transfer days were changed from Mondays to Wednesdays and p days went from ending at 6:30 to 4 now. We also cant leave out areas on p days so we are basically stuck where we are. He really wants us to focus more on the work because December was a poor number of baptisms for our mission. So even though a lot of missionaries are upset at that rule, I think its going to help.

New years eve was pretty fun! We were allowed to stay up but we had to be inside the apartment. So right at midnight we went out on our balcony and people were shooting off fireworks and yelling. It was pretty crazy! haha I got a video of it on my camera. Its so crazy that it is 2016 already!

We got our transfer calls from the zone leaders last night and Elder Hilton is staying in VFX with Elder Pickrell and I am getting transferred to Praia, Terceira on the Azore Islands!!! I am beyond excited! I am going to serve with Elder Puertas and he was in my district last transfer. His family is from Peru so we can practice our spanish together :) We are really good friends so this transfer will be a lot of fun! I fly out on a 2 hr flight to the Azores tomorrow morning and I am only allowed to take one suitcase so I will have to pack just a little of my stuff to take. I cant wait! I talked to Elder Puertas last night and he said that our area is right next to the U.S military base and one of the members is American so he always hooks the Elders up with American food. Another benefit is that he lets the Elders use his U.S. mailing address on the base so sending packages will be really cheap as it would be sending something stateside. 

Ill be sending pics of the island next week. 

Hope you are all well.

Eu vos amo! Fiquem bem!! 

Élder Brandon Michael Haroldsen

Missão Portugal Lisboa 

Rua Jorge Barradas Nº 14C

1500-370 Benfica, Lisboa

Portugal 

Prospero Ano Novo!

Hey Everyone! 

This week was probably one of the best weeks on my mission! CHRISTMAS!!

We had our division with the district leader on tuesday and I stayed with the district leader´s comp, Elder Petersen, here in VFX. It was such a blast!! We partied it up that night in the apartment haha. But on the division, a member in our ward really wanted to go christmas caroling and so she planned it out with us and we went with some of her friends from other wards. It was super fun!! We actually got a lot of people to open up to us and we got a lot of new people to pass this week. In total, we had made 71 contacts through singing in the streets!! Ut was intresting singing Christmas songs in Portuguese. My comp. Elder Hilton was happy he didnt have to sing with us lol.

Christmas Eve was wonderful. We took all day making cookies in the chapel and they came out pretty descent.. again haha. But we made them for the dinner we had that night. The same family we went caroling with invited us over to their house for Christmas Eve dinner. We had never been to their house yet because it is a 30 min bus ride up the mtn. and its super expensive to take the bus. Anyways. Its the família Gomes. They are from Angola, Africa, and they are some of the nicest people I have ever met. We went over there and they served us up with the typical Christmas Eve dinner that everyone in Portugal eats... Bacalhão, or salted codfish. MAN!! haha I hadent tried it yet on my mission and I was anticipating it lol. They served us some huge chunks of it and me and my comp. looked at each other and said,"you ready for this?" It was super funny. But we finished it. It definately wasnt my favorite Christmas Eve dinner but it was intresting trying something new.

Then Christmas was awesome. I opened my packages in the morning (thank you again to those who sent something) and I was super stoked to skype my parents and family but I had to wait until 8pm which was a long wait... but it was worth it. Talking to them made it seem like I picked right back up from the day I had got set apart. Lots of stories and laughs that made me super happy. They couldn´t understand Portuguese which was super funny. I was also able to speak to my uncle Jason who is fluent in Portuguese and I was super nervous because I knew he would test me but I passed and understood everything he said! I cant believe I have 18 months left on my mission. Time really flies when you´re having fun.

As for now, we are back on the grind! We are now in a tripanionship with an Elder who came out from the MTC with me but was in a different zone so I didn´t really get to know him in the MTC. But we are in a tripula until next wednesday which are transfers, meaning I will more than likely get transferred yet again for the 4th time in my fourth transfer. Since we each get 1.5hrs to email, we wouldn´t have had time to all do it in the church.. so we are using public computers here in the little downtown area. It´s been raining all day today!  

I forgot my camera at home once again so I will catch up on pics next week.

Hope you all had a super good Christmas and that you have a Great new Year. 

Love you all!! Fica Bem. Boa semana e Boas festas!!

Elder Haroldsen 

Élder Brandon Michael Haroldsen

Missão Portugal Lisboa 

Rua Jorge Barradas Nº 14C

1500-370 Benfica, Lisboa

Portugal 

FELIZ NATAL!!!!! 2015

Hello Friends and Family!! Merry Christmas!

This week flew by because it´s been really fun! 

We started off Tuesday with our mission Christmas Devotional in Oeiras. It was such a great time! It was in a huge chapel and it felt like we were back in the states and outside they had a cement soccer court just like Ecuador!! So I felt just at home. I got to see my homies from the MTC Elder Fletcher and Elder Solomon and my trainer Elder Lee. It was so awesome seeing those guys! Felt like it had been forever and we caught up on everything going on. 

At the conference we had a lot of spiritual things and a lot of skits by each zone and people singing. It was such a fun time! We also had a super good lunch and a gift exchange. I got a remote control car and so did my comp. lol

At the conference we talked to the Elders that are in our last area, Costa Da Caparica, and they were like, "You guys left your investigators Luis and Neusa superrrrr elect! They are getting baptized probably the Sunday after Christmas. We went over there and didn't even start teaching yet and they had already said they were going to get baptized" I was so pumped to hear that! I can´t wait to see pics of them in all white! The Lord works in mysterious ways!

Meanwhile, here in VFX, we had a pretty successful week too!

We met up with a guy we had met knocking doors and he was finally home and let us in. We taught the first lesson and it was really spiritual. He is a super nice guy. He is a singer and looks kinda like Usher haha. His name is Luis but his stage name is Axel. We talked to him about coming to church and he said he would try and we marked him for Baptism Dec.27.. but it´s going to be too complicated meeting with him since this is Christmas week so we are probably going to move his date to the 3rd of Jan.

Then, I was looking through the area book and found a guy named Bruno and called him up to see if we could meet with him. He said we could but then we had to cancel on him because we went to the hospital to give a lady a blessing. But he didn't answer anyways. Then two days later he calls us up and said he can meet at the park at 4h30.  So we were excited for that. He had spoken with the missionaries in the past but he had a huge problem with smoking and wasn´t quitting or keeping commitments so the sisters dropped him. We talked to him and he said he had quit smoking and he had been baptized in another church this past Sunday. We taught him about proper authority and why we need to be baptized by someone holding the Priesthood and asked him if he would read the Book Of Mormon and pray about baptism and he said he would! Then we marked him for baptism on January 3rd!! I´m super stoked for these guys!! I have been really praying to see a miracle happen with them. Hopefully they read and pray! 

We also have one more potential named Antonio. Hes never home and we only see him on the street sometimes but the other day he came up to us and said he wants to be baptized because he came to church once and he felt the Spirit super strong. He told us he smokes but he says he can force himself to quit. So we keep passing his house and we have gone by like 6 times this week but he was never home :( Hopefully wee can meet up with him this week and mark him for baptism too!

As for Christmas, Thanks to all who sent me packages or mail. Its such a wonderful feeling to get mail as a missionary because it reminds you that you have people rooting you on at home. 

Hope you all have a Merry Christmas with your families. Remember the reason for the Season!! Read Luke 2!

I´m so grateful for this time of year in which we have to celebrate the birth of our savior, Jesus Christ. I am so grateful for him. Because of him, we are able to live as a family for eternity and be made clean again!! How awesome is that?

I love him. He is my friend. He is my Savior and my Redeemer. I am so grateful for the love he has for me and for the opportunity I have to represent him and share of his love with the people out here in Portugal.

Love you all. Feliz Natal!. Até proxima semana.  

Com Amor,

Elder B. Haroldsen 

Élder Brandon Michael Haroldsen

Missão Portugal Lisboa 

Rua Jorge Barradas Nº 14C

1500-370 Benfica, Lisboa

Portugal 

11 DAYS TILL CHRISTMAS

Queridos amigos e família!

Hello everybody! Another week closer to Christmas! It seems like December is just flying by! 

This week was a pretty slow week. We tried marking a lot of appointments and almost all fell. We were unable to meet up with our investigators Agosto and Vanda even though we had marked two appointments with them. We talked to them on Saturday nightand they promised us they would come to church the following day and then they didn't show up. We were sad because we both were giving talks this past Sunday and we really wanted them to be there for it. But we are going to meet with them hopefully this Thursday if everything works out. 

This week we met a new investigator that doesn't speak Portuguese! His name is sam and he is friends with a girl in the branch. He is Australian and lives here in Portugal with his Grandma. She doesn't speak English and he doesn't speak Portuguese so he likes to talk to us to be able to speak some English together haha. we met up with him in the chapel and taught him the first lesson. he already knew most of it as he had been taught in the past. We we gave him the baptismal commit (soft commit.."when the Lord God answers your prayers about the Book of Mormon, will you follow the example of Jesus Christ by being Baptized by someone who holds the proper priesthood Authority?) He said, "of course I would.. is there really people who say no to that?" We said unfortunately yes.. We really enforced reading and praying and he said he would! He just left for a trip to France and another country and he said he will be back after Christmas and will meet with us again. So we are excited about him. A lot of potential right there. 

This week we also hiked to the top of the tallest mtn here. I didn't even think we could make it up there, but we did! The view was amazing. The only problem was after hiking and coming allll the way down the steep trail, i realized i had forgotten my planner clear at the top. So we did it twice. It was so hard lol. But at least we got to see the view during the day and at night :) 

Tomorrow we have a mission Christmas conference. We are also having a gift exchange. I get to see all my friends, specifically the ones from the MTC!! Im super stoked for that!

Well hope you all have a great week.

Love you all and always remember the Lord loves you!! 

Com amor,

Elder Haroldsen 

Élder Brandon Michael Haroldsen

Missão Portugal Lisboa 

Rua Jorge Barradas Nº 14C

1500-370 Benfica, Lisboa

Portugal 

LISBON TEMPLE

Hello Homies! 

Wow, Another week already? Where has the time gone!?

This week was a good one! We met up with some solid investigators named Augosto and Vanda. They are from Brazil and they have a son named Daniel. Their other kids still live back in Brazil. They own a Hair salon in VFX and they are super nice people. We attempted to make "American" Chocolate chip cookies for them this week and we had to go to the church to use the oven because for some reason our house doesnt have one lol. They loved them! This week we had two lessons with them and he really just wanted to study the bible and the Book Of Mormon and how they both relate and talk about each other... so we started off in John 10:16where Christ says "Other Sheep I have which are not of this Fold..." and linked it to 3rd Nephi 15:16-17,21 where Christ explains that the Nephites are the other sheep. 

Augosto was shocked. He was like,"Wow, this really explains the Bible. They really work together.. interesting" so we invited them to keep reading the BOM and keep praying. They promised us they would come to church next Sunday. We are praying for them a lot so we will see!

This Saturday I got to see something I have never gotten to see before.. the groundbreaking ceremony of the Portugal Lisbon Temple! We had to go to another chapel to watch it over broadcast and it was really spiritual and really awesome. My mission president and his wife were there and got to participate so it was awesome seeing them there. They are saying it will take about 2-3 years to build, so I am really excited to watch the progress! Ill have to come back after my mission to see it completely finished! 

Thats about it for the week.

As for today, we ate at a Rodizio restaurant which is just like Toucanos back at home. So good! Ill have to take my family there someday.

Have a good week everyone! Countdown to Christmas!! Sorry no pics this week because I forgot my camera at home :(

Love, Elder Haroldsen 

Élder Brandon Michael Haroldsen

Missão Portugal Lisboa 

Rua Jorge Barradas Nº 14C

1500-370 Benfica, Lisboa

Portugal