What Subject Title This Week?

Not gonna lie I’m getting tired of trying to think of subjects every week! I just sat here for like 2 minutes trying to think of what to have as my subject line. Why is that even necessary?!? Anyway...Sorry about the lack of the group mail yesterday, Monday, the myldsmail account thing was not working for some reason I have no idea why, so I got on my g-mail and got to respond to a few e-mails, but we are doing a little today so we can write everyone, because on my g-mail I don’t have everyone’s addresses.

Anyway, this week went by pretty good, kind of slow tho. I got really sick for a couple days. I have no idea why or what it was. I just pretty much took whatever pills I could find in the house. We don’t have any money so I couldn’t afford to go to the pharmacy. But I'm’ feeling a little better now. I had zero energy for a couple of days and some other stuff too, but I have my energy back, but the other stuff, like headaches, stuffy runny nose, congestion, all that doesn’t seem to want to leave quite yet I guess. But I’m better than I was so its okay I guess.

The other day we watched a film with a family about the pioneers. And some of the stuff they went thru, and it was a pretty old movie and not that great, but it still somehow was spirit filled. The room was for sure full of truth. Its crazy what the spirit can do to us. I love it when I can feel the spirit. I mean I LOVE it. Its an amazing feeling when you actually recognize it deep within your heart. And even by just watching a good movie or something. It really is awesome. And I love feeling that reassurance every so often that just keeps pushing me and telling me to keep going keep going YOU KNOW this stuff is true so share what you KNOW! That’s what just makes me want to go, go, go. The fact I know that it is true. And I can’t deny it so I have to share it! And the beauty of that truth brings people and I can testify that it brings ME the most happiness and the most peace ever.

Families are eternal. That is so, so important to me. If there is ONE thing I am to be out here for, it would be to share with Portugal that Families are FOREVER, and we KNOW that. I can’t even express my appreciation and my LOVE for that fact! I don’t know how to put it to words. Yeah, I may not be the PERFECT missionary, or person, but I KNOW, that these things are true and there is just no denying that fact and I am so, so grateful for it, because I LOVE my family. I LOVE them. And someday I will have a wife of my own, a family of my own. (weird to think about) but....it will happen, and the knowledge that I have that I will live with that love of my life and with my family forever.....How can someone NOT know that and live their lives?! So, that is why I’m here. To help, to teach, to serve, and be the best I can be. I am so grateful for what we have! We are truly so, so blessed. I know that WITHOUT a doubt in my mind. And I love you all so much. Have a fantastic week!!! Keep smiling and keep praying! Get close to Heavenly Father. He is waiting to hear from you. :)
Love Elder Gray

Happy Birthday!

I have 7 flipping minutes!! I have to apologize. But I had some people to write back to that wrote Happy Birthday to me. If I missed someone I’m sorry...Thank You now for writing to me! Haha! Okay, so my new comp is where I will pretty much leave you this week. He is a flippin stud! I am loving it!! He is, want to know the best part? He is normal!! Ah and I FEEL normal again! He isn’t gross and he doesn’t try to be funny when he’s not, he is just awesome! We are getting along GREAT, so I’m just loving every day.

On Sunday, 3 of the young kids that were just recently baptized received the priesthood! I was sitting in priesthood class, when they came and got me and I went upstairs and they were like Elder Gray, Edmilson has asked if you could be the one to give him the priesthood! I was like uh oh…..haha, because of the dang language! Which is still stinking freaking hard! Very frustrating by the way.....but it went okay...Bispo helped me out with the beginning with the words I don’t know then I gave the blessing guided by the Holy Ghost!! It was awesome because I felt the spirit just take over! I was so, so nervous at first, but then the Spirit just calmed me down, and it just went really nice. I loved it.

Okay NEW NEWSSSS!!! P-day is CHANGED!!! I will now be doing E-MAIL ON MONDAYS!!! Did you hear that?? I, Elder Gray will now be doing E-MAIL on MONDAY. Monday is now our new P-day. SO....Write me on SUNDAY!!! Ha ha!LOVE YOU ALL!!!! Love Elder Robby Gray

Love This Area!

I realized today is my dogs b-day, haha! How old is he? I don’t remember. ANYWAY, this week has been fantastic! Time is just flying by here in Setubal. I am LOVING it here, I don’t EVER wanna leave! These people are like a huge blessing to me I love it! We are always busy with lessons too, and we get fed so much lately its insane! We have been fed TEN times in the last TEN days!!! What? Its nuts! Way cool tho! I have come to LOVE rice! haha! Its weird, I have come to love some things here that I didn’t love quite as much before. Like onions, I know weird, but I love onions. Okay, okay, enough pointless talk.

SO our baptism on Saturday went great! The water was cold tho! We had a problem with the font. But the kid was a champ about it. It was cold, but everything went as planned and just great! It was awesome to see another baptism here! We have a few more people that are "potentials" that are probably headed right in that direction. We found this new investigator named Odete. She is incredible! She is pretty much already ready to be dunked and we have only taught her two times! She came to the baptism, then the next day came to church and cried and cried. She just LOVED it. And every time we talk with her she is just ALL smiles and LOVES everything we teach! It’s incredible! So I really hope within the next 2 weeks or so we can mark a date for her! She is 51. She is really awesome. I love teaching her.

We had this lesson with a less active member, and we were talking about the after life and how we will all have perfect bodies again, and she at first was like I don’t want my body back...(cuz she is really big), haha. We were talking about the spirit world and stuff and she said, “but I have a fat spirit too.” haha! It was just hilarious. She is really funny.

So one of those 10 dinner/lunch appointments we had was with Helio and Sonia. They are incredible! Helio is a recent convert just waiting patiently for the time to pass to where he can take his family to the temple. It’s awesome! They fed us, then after Sonia grabbed this big bag and just chucked SO much food in it! So we didn’t even have to do our shopping this week. All we had to get was Mayo. Awesome! Oh, then he drove us home and stopped by a store and bought us this amazing Portuguese bread and TONS of juice! They are so, so nice! I am in the process of writing them a thank you letter.

My new companion is going to be Elder Davis. I have heard really good things. AND MOST OF ALL....I hear he is a CLEAN person!!!! YAYAYAAYAYAYAY! What a relief! Ahhhh! I am way stoked. I hear that he is funny and just a cool kid. He is from Florida. YAY an American! Haha. I am already about out of time...Goodness! But I love you all! And most of all I love this work and I love this church! And I know that it is true! And I’m very lucky to be apart of this wonderful work to bring souls unto Christ!!I LOVE YOU!
Love Elder Gray

Fastest Week of my Mission

I am pretty sure I just had the FASTEST week of my mission. I can’t believe its Wednesday already. I think I said that last week too, but this week is even more so! I can’t believe it! But its just cuz stuff is going so well right now! We had those 3 baptisms. They were incredible. Everything went just PERFECT! And the brothers are all just doing great! We went and saw them yesterday and it was fantastic! The middle age one that at first was kind of the one falling behind, well now he is the one just eating up everything we give him! I love it! At the end of the lesson we say, “so is there anything we can do for you guys?” And he says “YES,” so we are like ok, “what’s up?”...and he says, “come back!” We say, “yep of course...when?” He says, “Sempre!!” Haha, it was awesome, I loved it! Then we went to a dinner appt. that went really well. We have had a dinner appt. every day so far!!

We had lunch on Sunday, then dinner on Monday, dinner again on Tuesday, we have dinner again tonight, tomorrow we have appointments for lunch AND dinner! It’s just crazy! I think we have one on Friday too but I’m not sure exactly. Its crazy, it’s almost like I’m in the states!
Oh yeah, and at the baptism I gave a talk on the Holy Ghost, and it was really good, went really well. Okay kind of, it was hard, but it went alright. Oh, AND we have another baptism this week! On Saturday again, this kid named Wilson. He is progressing a bit slower then we’d like but at least he is ready and going for it. We for sure have to keep going and helping him. It’s really awesome though.

This ward is just fantastic! I could stay here the rest of my mission!! I guarantee there is no better area than this one here in the Lisbon mission. I love it here. I will be getting a new companion here next week. I hope it will be someone way cool! And someone CLEAN for goodness sakes!

So on Sunday and Monday, we met with this family, Familia Santos. They are the COOLEST family! They are way normal and just fun! AND when we ate with them.....They had ICE! Whoa!!! ICE, what? No way! OH yes I ate it up! I had probably like 25 pieces of ice, haha!! It was amazing. Another one of those “Little Things” that you just don’t realize how good it is till it’s GONZO for 2 years! Like Free Refills! Goodness don’t you guys take that for granted! It will be nice to have that back someday....haha!

So church this week was really great. Spiritual as normal, and it was fast and testimony meeting and there were a lot of talks about the plan of salvation because of the boy that died. It was tough, but very spiritual. That is what I got out of it. I’m still having a hard time understanding this Portuguese stuff. What is Portuguese rated on the hardness to learn scale? Its GOTTA be pretty far up there, right under learning a new alphabet or something. J Jenn, Scotty, tell little Gracee happy big number 2 for me haha!! I expect PICS soon. (Again) :) Thank you all for everything! I LOVE YOU ALL!!!!
LOVE ELDER GRAY!

Adventurous Week

This last week seriously flew by! I can’t believe I am already sitting here writing this e-mail again! It was very eventful, very good, but also very sad. A young kid in our ward, 17 years old, awesome, kid, one of those that you just know will be at church and he is just always smiling and happy and what not, well he got in a car accident on Friday night and died. He was with his older sister, the driver, and his 2 other brothers and his girlfriend. The car that they got in the accident with hit their car right at his door. The back left door. He didn’t have a chance. I heard that he broke every bone in his body. So, so sad, I couldn’t believe it. He was really an awesome kid. But, I know its life, things happen quickly and very unexpectedly and sometimes very tragic and super hard to deal with. I felt so bad for the family. His sister was driving and is still in the hospital. She broke a few bones and her hip. One other brother is in the hospital but will be fine, and the other is fine. He walked away without a scratch. The family is still having a hard time. I couldn’t help but feel the most for the girlfriend though. I left my “best friend” back home to serve my mission for these two years, but I know I will return and see her again. This tragic accident has left his girlfriend barely able to walk. She is so torn up, I just felt so bad. I felt so helpless.

Sacrament meeting this week was the best sacrament meeting I think I have ever attended. The spirit was SO strong it was really incredible. The chapel was chuck full of people and the meeting was about an hour and 45 minutes long. Our choir sang, (which I’m in) uuhhhhummm, thank you, thank you, (doesn’t mean I’m good by any means...) haha, but the spirit there was incredible. We sang a song about Trust in God. It was awesome! It was pretty hard to sing though cuz me and everyone else was choked up or crying. It was tough but truly amazing.

The funeral was on Tuesday. We only got to see about 30 minutes though because we had to go to Lisbon for me, I had a doctor appt. that couldn’t be changed. Lame! But the half hour we saw was awesome! There were 2 great speakers and some amazing hymns and what not. It was great. I heard by the end of the funeral like at the cemetery there were over 400 people there! WOW! It’s like in this place everyone is just one big family. It was incredible to see the love and support from so many people.
Okay, so on a happier note, we may have lost one, but we are gaining 3 on Saturday! (Members, that is.) We have 3 baptisms on Saturday which I’m SUPER stoked for! They are 3 young guys, 17, 14, and 9. They are such cool kids and I have seen so much progression out of them it’s incredible. It’s mostly incredible to see what they are willing to give up to be a member of Christ’s church. It’s truly a miracle being able to see peoples lives change for the best here. I love it. I can’t imagine being on one of those missions where they baptize like 10 people a week. Wow! I’m just grateful for what I have. Chega. ;) We talked to the 3 boys last night about who will do what and stuff and they said they wanted both of us to baptize them, well one of them, and we were like uhh it can only be one of us, haha. The 2 oldest kids will be baptized by members here, and the young one, my comp will baptize. It’s his last transfer so it is an awesome way to go out I’d say!! Anyway, that’s about it for the week! It was quite the adventurous week. And it was good. Thank you all for everything. I LOVE YOU!
Love Elder Gray
Oh and also, next week we have one more marked for baptism. We really hope it will go, but his desire is a bit lacking. So we have more work to do. :)