Homeless!!

Alright Mom, don't freak out. We're not actually homeless! 

So this past Tuesday night, we had to go to Porto. We left at 8pm and got to Porto around 9:30pm and then we had to take the metro and walk all the way across Porto to get to the hotel. It's a good thing missionaries are supposed to be home by 9:30.. Porto was sooo sketchy!! But we got to the hotel safely and stayed with 3 other sisters there. The next day, we got all you can eat Portuguese breakfast and then I went to do residency and Sister Pennock went to the leadership meeting with President. I spent the whole day with brazilians which was soo much fun! Only problem is that they talk soo soo fast but hey, it's still lots of fun! I got to knock doors in Porto for 3 hours with Sister Silvério from Manaus which was loads of fun too. 

After all of the meetings were over, we had interviews with President and totally forgot to catch the bus back to Viseu.. Oops.. So we stayed overnight with some Sisters in Porto. We got back to Viseu in the morning and went to work again.

Then.. the next day, we had to go to Coimbra at 7am for a zone meeting. 2 hour bus ride. Then we got on the 4:15pm bus to Viseu and finally got home around 6pm. Home sweet home. I don't think we'll be traveling this much in the next few weeks. Thank goodness!

Thursday night we got to watch Melanie, a girl in our ward, open up her mission call!! She's going to the AUSTALIA MELBOURNE MISSION! English speaking of course! And she gets to go to the Provo MTC! She was so excited!! She wants to work with the missionaries all the time now! Also, we're going to start having English classes this week for her and her friends who want to learn English. I'm actually soo excited to teach them! 

Earlier this week, we were talking to Bea about how baptism is the door to enter the kingdom of God. She was talking about her friends and how she wants them to be with her and God. She asked what would happen if they didn't accept Christ and his baptism in this life. We talked about how we can do baptisms for the dead. She wants to baptize her grandpa now :) She also really wants her friend to join the church but I think she's a little nervous about inviting her. So she decided that she would just wait until she died. haha she was laughing about it and yelled, ''Morre Mariana!!'' or ''Die Mariana!'' Oh Bea.. She's so adorable. In our church, we have the opportunity to baptized those who never had the chance to accept Christ in their lives. We are baptized for them (proxy) and they have the chance to accept it or not. I'm so grateful for this because there are so many people who have lived and died without even hearing about Christ and it wouldn't be fair if they never got the chance. (Here's a little more info: https://www.lds.org/topics/baptisms-for-the-dead?lang=eng)

Something that I really learned this week was the purpose of members of the church and their role in missionary work. I don't remember who said this but a member's role isn't to just feed the missionaries (although it's really nice!! Keep doing it!). Members and missionaries are supposed to work together. The only way the church will grow is through the members. Us missionaries can knock doors and contact as many people as we want but our outcomes will be minimal. We have amazing members here in Viseu who will come to help us teach a lesson or help someone at the drop of the hat. They're amazing! We have BIG plans for our ward these next few months and we will only be able to do it with our members! 

Love you all!
Sister Hillam

Francecinha. It's a must have in Porto. It's pretty much bread with all different kinds of meat on it with more bread on top and then a fried egg on the top with melted cheese covering everything and then to top it off, some kind of sauce and french fries. I thought America was the land of weird creations... Anyways, it was actually really good and super filling!

Room 208 of the Antas Hotel

Some of the sisters that were in Porto on Wednesday

Melanie and her mission call!! 

Zone of Coimbra

Viseu the Beautiful

I'm still in Viseu! And with Sister Pennock! We were soo excited to stay here and together!! She's soo amazing and so is Viseu!

Alright so rundown on the week:

João Paulo was baptized!!! It was so great and so amazing! He's so happy now and super different than when we first met him. He's going to receive the priesthood next Sunday.

And talking about the priesthood... Emanuel received the priesthood yesterday! He'll probably baptize his mom, Margarida, on Sunday! And now, he's bringing his friend, Sergio, to church and the Elders are trying to teach him!! Emanuel goes and teaches lessons with us almost every day. He's such an amazing help and a great translator! I'm sure he gets annoyed but I ask him to pronounce the weirdest words for me and he doesn't understand why I can't say them. When he serves a mission, he'll understand.

Now we have Paulina. She's a less-active member that Sister Pennock ran into while coming back from Porto. She's the cutest and most thoughtful lady I've ever met and this past week, we just kept on running into her so we took that as a sign that it's definitely time for her to come back to church. We invited her on Saturday to a baptism and then church the next day and she came! I was talking to her before the baptism about her children and she showed us a picture of them and I looked at one and was like 'Hmm I've seen him before..' and then I realized that I met him a few weeks ago at stake conference AND that he was my cousin's, Jordan, companion on the mission!! His name was Elder Barata! Super small world! There's definitely a reason we found Paulina!

We've been praying for lots of families to teach this past week and man has the Lord blessed us! All of the lessons we have taught have been to families! Literally all of them!! It's seriously amazing!! I love to imagine them going to the temple and growing together in the Gospel! We have faith that it will happen!!!!

Love you all so much!!!
Sister Hillam

Joao Paulo after his baptism!

The kitten that Paulina brought to church. I named her Pipoca (popcorn).

Today's lunch. Arroz de Pato (duck rice) and Bacalhau à Brás (codfish with french fries..? Don't really know what it was but it was great!)

District pic before transfers. Everyone stayed except for the Japanese sister.

District pic before transfers. Everyone stayed except for the Japanese sister.

Paulina!!!

Quatro meses na Missao!!

Querida familia e amigos,

I hit my four month mark yesterday.. Only 14 more to go! Thank goodness it's not less!

Tomorrow we'll find out if we'll be getting transferred or not! We seriously have no idea what will happen since there have been so many changes recently in the mission. Vamos ver! 

We've been working really hard with Margarida (Emanuel's mom). She was marked for baptism for the 24th of September but she didn't come to church yesterday. Investigators have to come to church at least 2 times before getting baptized. It helps them understand the importance of taking the sacrament and attending church. Well anyways, we got to her house early in the morning and Emanuel was ready for church but Margarida was still in her night gown and was complaining about how sick she was. She kept on saying that she was 'mal disposto' which really just means that she doesn't feel like it. So we ended up staying there for an hour and we told her that we wouldn't leave until she came with us. She ended up not coming and we went to church really late. Then we decided to grab some members and go to her house so she could take the sacrament during the other ward. We looked so funny. Us, two older men, and a 30 year old sister. It was hilarious. Margarida actually wasn't sick.. She just had things to do. We ended up postponing her baptism.. Super sad.. We're trying really hard to help her realized the importance of baptism. 

Two of the members that came with us to her house, Firmino and Carla, were talking to me about transfers and they said that I'll never end up leaving Viseu. They said that I'll stay here the whole mission and then after, I'll just stay and marry someone from Viseu. Haha we'll see about that. Not really something I need to be thinking about right now but hey, at least the members like me!

Remember João Paulo? So we actually dropped him about two weeks ago and gave him to the elders. For us, he wasn't progressing and he was kind of a single man, which we aren't allowed to teach--so let the Elders try. Last week, we saw Paulo in the street and he looked so happy and he said he was going to the capela with the Elders. Then later, we talked to the Elders on the phone and they sounded soo happy. They only said that they found money on the ground. Then we talked to Emanuel, who's best buds with Paulo (he calls him Paulinho) and he said that something cool would be happening on Monday. We put together all the pieces and guessed that JOÃO PAULO IS GETTING BAPTIZED! Apparently it was supposed to be a surprise for us but we figured it out haha!! No one knows that we knew before they announced it at church yesterday.. We acted surprised though! He'll be getting baptized in an hour and a half! Ahhh!! 

We taught a less active family this week. They stopped going to church because someone offended them. It was a super sad lesson. They know the church was true and they were preparing to go to the temple! But it was also an incredibly spiritual lesson too. Never in my life have I felt the spirit so strong. I knew exactly what to say and the Portuguese just came. At the end of the lesson, the wife was crying. She knows that it's time to come back. They still wouldn't come to church but we brought them flowers yesterday so we're just doing baby steps.

We also learned from the people here that fig milk can take off moles (superstitions)..... Well at least we thought it did.. Sister Pennock wanted to try it on the mole on her neck so she put some on. She said it burned a little. I looked at it a little later. THE MOLE WAS COMING OFF! But it looked really gross... Then that night Sister Pennock learned that it had actually burnt her skin.. It looked gross. Then an investigator looked at it and got soo mad at her and then insisted on cleaning it off. Thank goodness I'm going to be a nurse. 

Elder Zwick came to our mission last week! He talked a lot about our foundations in Christ and how we need to strengthen them! This is something that I want to work on more and more! Elder Zwick is such an amazing servant of the Lord!! I got to talk to him about my grandpa for a little as well. It was nice :)

Well, love you all so much!! You all are great and are doing great things with your lives!

Com amor,
Sister Hillam

The awesome Indian food we ate today!!

Sister Pennock enjoying her Indian food!

''I'm not crazy, just a little''

Crazy week again! We never get a break, it's so great :) 

We had divisions this week with the sisters from Coimbra this week! It was such a crazy day! In the afternoon, the sisters still hadn't gotten here so we had to go on divisions with a few members in our ward. It was so much fun! We drove around in cars (aleluia!) and visited tons of people! Then the sisters arrived and we did the same (just without the cars). Then in the morning, it was Sister Guerrero's birthday so we went running with her while the other sisters in Viseu snuck into our apartment and made banana pancakes for her. It was the cutest!

We were fasting all day on Friday for our zone and man, fasting and praying works amazingly! I know the mission isn't only about numbers but we had better numbers that day, that we had had when we had 4 sisters in our area working at the same time. It was crazy!! The Lord really does bless us!

Also, another crazy thing.. We had to run home again the other night. We found out that we've been running 6-7 minute miles every night. Never thought I would say this but it's actually kinda fun!

We have been teaching Emanuel's mom, Margarida. She has been kind of down the past few days and ended up not coming to church yesterday so we had to move her baptism date. We were talking to her with Emanuel and she was crying, which Sister Pennock and I were totally fine with because, you know, sometimes you just got to let it out. But Emanuel didn't feel super comfortable with that so he kept on doing the craziest things to cheer her up. He grabbed her cheeks at one point and made her smile. Then later he said, in english, ''I'm not crazy, just a little'' in his cute little english accent. Emanuel is like a 25 year old 5 year old. Margarida was definitely much happier after that!

Also, I got to see my old comp/cousin yesterday!! Weird to call her Madi and see her without a tag! Missed her a lot!

I love the Portuguese peope here!! They're so cute and have a few funny phrases they use:

Fogo: literally means fire but it's kind of like 'dang it' or 'ohh man!'

Puxa: means pull but it's something that you say at the end of a really long story and you just don't know what to say.. 

Sei la: doen't make much sense when you translate it to english but you say it when you don't know the answer to something or don't feel like answering a question. Investigators do this a lot..

Em aguas de bacalhau: 'In waters of codfish' kinda weird.. It's like saying 'suck between a rock and a hard place' Like you're not going anywhere, just sitting there with the fish.

Well, we're in the last week of the transfer! It's flown by! Next Tuesday we'll find out if I'll stay in Viseu or go somewhere else! It's going to be crazy!

Sorry this email is so random.. 

Love you all so much!

Sister Hillam

Sister Hansen and I have the same shoes... And now the same tan lines! 

Stake Conference in Viseu.  Played the violin with the stake choir!

We went to the feira today and found soo many cool things. My favorite were the plates :)