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

Baptism!!

This week was great! As you all know, last week I was saying that we had a baptism scheduled for Sunday. Well, good news, we did have it, but at first they were just going to have our Bishop baptize them. But then on Friday night they had their interviews and they decided to have another elder, one of the zone leaders…and ME do the baptisms!!! I could not even believe it! So, yep I got to baptize Yuri Agues on Sunday the 22^nd of February. It was awesome! I couldn’t believe I was getting this opportunity so soon in my mission. There are many elders that have been out over a year and haven’t been in the water. So I feel very blessed and very lucky. It went well and the two people we baptized are doing great. We went over there yesterday and they are like new people! That just shows how amazing this gospel is and how important it is in our lives!

I want to apologize to all of you who have sent me emails and I haven’t responded directly to you. I got so, so, so many emails this week I could not believe it! I got 29 new emails! You love me too much! Ha ha. But that took me quite some time to read all of them. Thank you all so much! I LOVE getting the mail from all of you and hearing all of your stories!

This week we went to this Japanese restaurant. It had a big conveyor belt thing and they just put food like crazy on it and there were a few different kinds of sushi yuuummmmy! And just a ton of very, very good stuff! So we got to eat as much as we possibly could. And the very best part? It was only $6.50!! That is cheap! For as much sushi and amazing Japanese food as you can possibly eat! Oh, it was awesome! I loved it. Elder Hildebrandt and I are going to go there after our weekly planning session on Friday for lunch. I love it!

This week we did some door knocking and like usual some more street contacting. The door knocking is so annoying though unless we can get inside because they just say ‘quem em’ through the box thing and we don’t even get a chance to say anything. It’s so nice when we can follow someone in the door.

My new comp is really cool. We get along great. I’m still learning new things everyday. Well, I hope all is well back at home. Continue to work hard. I love you all so much!

Elder Gray

My Hamper, ha ha ha

So far this week has been really good! One of my best friends is here and I got to see him last night! It was so good to see Devin. I was so happy, it was the best night ever!

The week has flown by and we've been speaking strait Portuguese, and I don't feel any smarter! Ha ha! We had to teach the first lesson in Portuguese, talk about tough! I feel like with just the casual talking I'm doing ok, but when it's time to teach...Nao Bom! (not good)! But I'm pushin thru doing what I can to get by.

So...my hamper broke! It was a "piece" to begin with, so I had to buy a new one. It's AWESOME! I never thought that happiness could come through a hamper, ha ha ha. It's on a hanger, so it hangs up and its got a "dark" section and a "whites" section! It's totally WICKED SWEET!!

Everything's going just great...feel free to send peanutbutter bars, brownies, more goop...:)

Elder Gray

I love Sundays!

So yesterday, oh my goodness, it was the BEST day yet here at the MTC for sure! Sundays are awesome! It started out with breakfast at 7:20. Yes, can you believe it? Me up at 6:30 a.m. every day! I can't. Then we had Sacrament Meeting at 8:00 and me and my comp passed the sacrament, which was pretty cool. Then we had personal study time until priesthood meeting at 11:10. Then lunch, then more classroom and study time, and then at 3:00 we get to go to the residence halls and relax and do whatever we want until dinner.

Okay, but now is the good part! We had our devotional by Pres. David Madsen and his wife, which was really good.  But the concluding song, "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing", it was AMAZING! It was so, so amazing singing it with so many missionaries, two or three thousand I think. Man it was so awesome I can't even hardly explain it. The spirit felt so strong as we sang it I wanted to just sing it again and again and again. I got chills like multiple times.

Then my favorite part, we watched "Joseph Smith - The Prophet". That movie is so amazing! I got chills like I never have before. When he kneels down and that darkness begins to overcome him, I had the chills throughout my whole body. Even my head was tingling. It was amazing...I just loved it.

Love,

Elder Gray

P.S. The food here seems to be getting worse at time goes on. Sad. Horrible chicken today. The skin was like crunchy hard. So I had some cereal. Cereal is always an option, which is very nice. Oh, and the chocolate milk hasn't failed me yet either.  ;-)

Goop!

Hey mom, thanks for the goop! All my companions loved it, too. (Good thing you sent such a big box!)

We're pretty much into full-blown classes every day. We just have one classroom and two teachers that teach the gospel and Portuguese, too. So like two birds with one stone. But ya, we're learning the language pretty fast. It is so hard! Next week we have to teach a whole lesson in Portuguese; I'm so scared!

Thank you so much mom for everything. You're the best!   

 

Miss you, love you!

Elder Gray