Life is Good in Agualva

This week has mostly been just beautiful! The weather has really shaped up. I put on a short-sleeved shirt yesterday and I felt like a new man! This last week was also really good as far as the work goes. We have a new investigator named Negrinho who we met just as we were about to head home. We were just making a few more street contacts when I saw this guy holding a big guitar bag. I was like oooh!! Let’s contact the dude with the guitar! So we did and he turned out to be the coolest guy!! He LOVES to sing, especially in English, so he came to our English class on Wednesday and we helped him. Then the next day we went to visit him and he was like, “Let’s go to the park and I’ll play the guitar and you guys can sing!” I was just like, “Oh boy, me sing? Who is this guy kidding? This white boy can’t sing!” BUT...sure enough we did! And long story short, we sang Celine Dion. HA! Don’t make fun okay? It was so funny and I felt like so, so awkward, but since it was in English it didn’t matter. And all the other people walking by seemed to enjoy it.

We then we had some guy walk up and he was like, “I love music!!” So we ended up singing with him and we gave him a pass along card.

It was way fun, but not something to speak of in the states. Haha! But as they say here in Portugal, if it’s English, it’s “tight”. Sometimes I have seen like hard-core gangster dudes thinkin’ they are so tight and they are listening to Beyonce! It’s hilarious!

Anyways, another fun story, last week we went bowling and I decided to see if I could do bad...then good. Is it bad to hustle on a mission? Haha. So anyways we made our teams and then made a bet that whichever team loses has to buy the winners ice cream. So, the first game I just chucked the ball as hard as I could, which is no way to do well. I did horrible and the others were all like, “Have you ever bowled before?” And I was like, “Oh, once or twice.” 

But then, the second game I actually tried and beat every single one of them! Ha! I loved it! I got 145, which isn’t like way good, but it’s pretty and good enough to beat everyone else and we won and got ice cream. It was so funny cuz after the first game the other team thought for sure they had it in the bag. It was a blast!

One more quick story. We have this other investigator named Clayton. What a good guy! He is Brazilian and is separated from his wife, but has a daughter and when we went over there the first time he was with his daughter and we taught the first lesson. It all went great. So, we went back two days later and found out that his wife had fled to Spain and taken his daughter with her! Oh, he was so distraught! He was shaking like he was freezing cold. I just couldn’t believe how upset he was. I felt so sad for him. So we tried to comfort him and just be there for him and he totally opened up to us so much about his life and his problems and worries. Now remember this is only the second time visiting this guy and he had already opened up completely. WOW! How amazing is that? So, we told him we would pray for him and his daughter, then we had a good prayer with him before we left.

We came back about three days later and while we were there, there was a knock on the door. It was his daughter! I have never seen someone go from not so happy to so, so happy in a second! I couldn’t keep the big huge smile off my face. It was so awesome, I loved it!

Well anyways, I gotta go, it’s that time again. Thank you all for everything!!! Have a great week okay?

Love,

Elder Gray