Last Transfer, Whaat?

So now starts the countdown. Not a countdown of days until I see my family but a countdown of the amount of days left for me to be a representative of Christ, to serve Him, and help my brothers and sisters come unto Him. So excited!! I'll be staying here in Amial and I'll be training (again! for the fourth time!). Sister Gilbert is killing it and will be going to open an area down south with another sister! So not ready to give up my hula dancing comp! :(

Last week we had zone conference and it was super amazing! President Amorim went to a conference of all the mission presidents in Europe and ELDER HOLLAND was there and President got a lot of good suggestions from that! (Oh also, the conference was IN OUR MISSION so ELDER HOLLAND was IN PORTUGAL!!) President really emphasized the importance of Preach My Gospel. He asked us all how many times we had read it and I totally thought I had read it a lot but he said no. So now I'm repenting and I decided to start and finish it during this last transfer. Better late than never! Pray for me :) 

Right now in Amial, we're working on finding the next person that's ready to get baptized. Lots of working with members and lots of knocking doors and contacting people-- And LOTS of following the Spirit. I'm so grateful that Heavenly Father doesn't just throw us out here alone. He gave us the third member of the Godhead, the Holy Ghost. As we strive to be worthy of His companionship, we will find ourselves where God wants us to be, when He wants us to be there. 

ALSO GENERAL CONFERENCE IS THIS WEEKEND!! Go check it out!!  Go listen to a prophet's voice! 

BEIJINHOS GRANDES
Sister Hillam 

Us in the São Bento train station waiting to go to Trofa

The old Viseu crew (E. Leatham, S. Carter, E. Cardenuto, Me)

 Divisions with the sisters from Matosinhos (S. Duce e S. Kunz)

São Bento

The District of Amial 

Me and Hermínia aka Fofinha (little cute thing)

São Bento

Helena Made It!!!!

Last week of the transfer! Ahh too fast!!

Helena got baptized!! She was soo happy!! The best part though was at church yesterday when she was confirmed as a member of the Church. She was just crying tears of joy and when she came back to sit with me, she was so happy! LOVE HER!!

We did divisions with the sisters from Foz! I was with Sister Pastana who's in her first transfer and MAN is she a fireball! We were able to find 3 new investigators, mark an old investigator for baptism, and contact to many people! She's a great example of consecration to the Lord. And only in her first transfer! They just keep on getting better and better every time newbies arrive!

Okay I'm super grateful to serve with Sister Gilbert. She's amazing! Literally. We've learned A LOT together, how to both be leaders and followers at the same time, how to do comp inventories (lol), and lots of marriage prep (our future spouses will be forever grateful). LOVE her SO much!

BEIJINHOS GRANDES!
Sister Hillam

Mission Leadership Counsel 

The cutest Brazilian I know (okay one of them because they are all adorable) Sister Gomes!

Our sweet Helena got baptized!!

Brasi the relief society president. AMAZING!

The amazing ward!

The District 

Our future companions ;)

Us and Elders Holdsworth and Franco

Division with the sisters from Foz do Douro (S. Pastana e Huntsman)

16 MESES!! O QUÊ..?

So today I hit 16 months on a mission... Super crazy! We had interviews with President Amorim and he said that he didn't have any suggestions to give me or Sister Gilbert. He said that we already know what to do but that now is the time to apply it. He gave us the slogan of "DO IT!" So now on our wall we have a giant "DO IT!" sign.

Remember Helena #2? Yeah, she's getting baptized this Saturday now! She was originally marked for the 23rd but then all the members are going to be in Madrid at the temple and wouldn't be there and then the next week is General Conference so we asked her how she felt about this Saturday and she said that as long as she gets baptized, she's happy! WOOHOO!! Pics to come next week :)

These past few weeks I've been really thinking about the importance of obedience. There's some graffiti in a tunnel in our area that says "Obedecer é morrer" (Obedience is death).

As we passed, I thought if that was true or not, and I thought about Christ. If He hadn't obeyed God and died for us, we would be living without a purpose here on Earth. Without the Atonement of Christ, there is no possible way for us to return to Heavenly Father and it would be as if we were dead, with no purpose. So "obedecer é viver!" As we obey God, we are blessed and we live life happily. I'm so grateful for that person who decided to graffiti the tunnel.


BEIJINHOS GRANDES
Sister Hillam

Divisions with the sisters from Guimarães! Sister Carter e Sister Billings 

Irmã Zecas! She was mission companions with both of my aunts!

Irmã Gilberta is literally the youngest looking 70-year-old in the world.. and sassiest... 

Happy Pdaying :)

Fotos!
1. Irmã Zecas! She was mission companions with both of my aunts!
2. What we did last pday..
3. Divisions with the sisters from Guimarães! Sister Carter e Sister Billings <3
4. Irmã Gilberta is literally the youngest looking 70 year old in the world.. and sassiest..
5. Happy Pdaying :)

A Semana das Helenas

So this week we just happened to find a ton of elect ladies named Helena.

Helena #1- Talked about her last week. She is literally AMAZING but the depression is really strong. The medicine makes her sleep a lot so it's super hard for her to get to church in the morning. She doesn't even hear the phone, alarm, doorbell, or our knuckles on the door. But we had some super spiritual lessons with her this past week. And a super fun one. So we had another sister, Sister Gomes, staying with us for the night and we went over to Helena's house to teach her. Sister Gomes is from Brazil and is black and has the most beautiful hair with waves in it. Helena's mom, Fátima, was mesmerized by her. So in the middle of the lesson, Fátima starts running her fingers over the waves in Sister Gomes's hair and starts talking about how she would love to go surfing in her waves. Then later, we showed Fátima the note we left in her Book of Mormon and she tried to pronounce our names and said, "Seu-est-our Willam e Chiclete." Legit sounded like she was speaking German. It was good comic relief for Helena. When she laughed, there was such light in her eyes. She just needs lots of help from God and medicine. 

Helena #2 - A reference from the elders. She's this cute old lady that showed up at church last week and came again this week. We taught her this week and invited her to be baptized and she accepted!! She marked her baptism in her calendar too :) She has a ton of faith and love to help others. She gave us an envelope the other day with a note written on it and then later when we opened it, there were 60£ in it... so on Sunday, we gave her another envelope with the money in it for her. Cute. She's super sweet and loves church!

We also received tons of references whose names were also Helena so that was fun! 

For the past two weeks, we've had a substitute mission president because President Amorim went to the States to renew his green card there. So our mission president was President Moreira from the Seventy. He came to our district meeting last Tuesday and gave us some super cool suggestions. He said that if we want to baptize someone, we need to have three people marked for baptism. If we want three baptisms, we need to mark five people. So we're trying to mark way more people now! Also, he gave us the opportunity to ask him whatever we wanted. That was sweet!

We have a recently returned missionary in our ward and we went out the other day to work with her and she said to live each week of your mission as if it's your last. She said that she saw so many miracles during the last week of her mission, sooo since Sister Gilbert and I are nearing the ends of our missions (just got my return itinerary....), that's something that we want to do better. Live as if it's your last day!

BEIJINHOS GRANDES
Sister Hillam

Fernanda

Juliana (RM) she served in Cabo Verde!

Helena e Fatima

Irmão Jacó has a plan of salvation tie-- whaaat??!!