Hi Kids!
I can’t believe that we arrived in Portugal
a week ago today – between the wonky flight, the jet-lag, and everything that
we’ve done so far, it feels a lot longer. :)
When we arrived Wednesday morning,
President and Sister Barcellos, along with the office couple, the Erickson’s,
were at the airport to meet us. But it took us over 2 hours to get through
immigration and Pres. Barcellos had to leave before we met him. But Sis.
Barcellos is really bubbly and enthusiastic. She has an interesting story. They
had two children, and then she felt prompted to go back to school. So she went
back to college and got her PhD in Bio Chemistry. She worked for awhile and
then she felt like they needed to have another child, so she quit working and
they had their son, who’s now 9 years old. So they have a 17 year old girl, a
15 year old girl, and 9 year old, David.
Then the Ericksons took us to our
hotel to drop off all our bags.
We wanted to crash, but they took us back
to the office to fill out the paperwork for our visas and drivers licenses.
Then we went to lunch and I ordered fish. Here’s what I got:
Sardines! I watched the guy, sitting next
to us, hold them by the head and the tail, and eat the meat off, like a cob of
corn. I ended up cutting the heads off and then peeling the meat off of the
bones. It was slow going and a lot of bone picking! After lunch, we went to the
local market because Sis. Erickson wanted to buy salmon for dinner.
They had some interesting things…
Piggies
Snails
And we think Rabbits??
That night, we had dinner with the
Erickson’s and another missionary couple. The salmon was fresh and delicious!
But Dad & I were fading fast. They took us back to our hotel and we slept
11 hours.
In the morning, we had a yummy breakfast
(including the egg tarts ya’ll told us about) and went for a walk. They have
some steep streets here!
We popped in a “Chinese Mega Store” and had
never seen such a variety of dog toys and doggie bags before. The Portuguese
love their dogs!
That afternoon, the Erickson’s picked us up
and we went to the Lisbon Temple. It was beautiful and the people were so kind
and friendly.
After the temple, the Ericksons took us to the grocery store, so we could get some supplies before we took off in the morning. The next day, we drove 4 hours to our city, Vila Real.
The scenery was
SO pretty!!
There’s one set of elders in Vila Real and
they met us at the apartment with the keys. Then they helped us bring
everything in from the van, move furniture, and set up our bed. They’re super
cute guys - Elder Quarnberg (we call him Elder Q.) is from Highland, Ut. and
Elder Spencer’s from California.
Our apartment’s older, but nice, 3 bedrooms - way more space then we need. I guess that’s what the average apt is like here, so even the single missionaries have 3 bedrooms. After a lot of moving, we all went to dinner. The next morning, Dad and I went to a tire store, that’s behind our apt building, and asked them if they’d blow up my exercise ball. They were really nice and happy to do it. Dad gave a tip to boy (we think maybe the owner’s son) and he was excited.
Ericksons had told us that tipping’s not a thing here.
We worked as long as we could cleaning the
apartment and washing some dishes and things I brought from the mission office.
They have a basement with a little kitchen area and one room is full of stuff
left behind from the missionaries. So I rifled through it for pots and pans,
other kitchen stuff, and whatever random thing I thought we could use. I also
scrounged through the spare room of the elders’ apt. Before Covid, the
mission nurse lived there. She left some random stuff. I got an Old Navy fleece
onesie. It’s too big, but I won’t care when it’s freezing. 🥶 It turns out that a little space heater we found there
was a win! We’ve already used it. And a Tupperware steamer, that’s
missing a piece, cooked our food Sunday night cuz the stove is broken. We’re
changing Dad’s favorite saying to: “When in doubt, don’t throw it out!“ haha!
Our cluttered kitchen:
We finally had to stop and get ready for a
“welcome party” that the elders said the branch President planned for us.
President Hugo is from Brazil, 30 years old, about 5’6”, and a bundle of
energy! He makes us laugh. But he’s so committed to the Gospel and a worker. He
and his wife moved to Portugal about three years ago. He drives a cargo truck
for a living.
When we got to the party, there were about 8 people silently sitting in the room. They hardly looked at us when we walked into the room with the elders. We’ve since realized that the Portuguese people are more sober and standoffish. They seem to keep to themselves. No one ever smiles at us when we’re out walking - most don’t even make eye contact with us. We went around and introduced ourselves and shook their hands. About 10 minutes after we did that, Chanelle happened to FaceTime me. So I went back around and introduced her to everybody. They loved it!!
Look at the grin on this guy‘s
face.
It was the perfect ice-breaker!! The
members started to warm up and talk to us. (Thanks for being a good sport,
Chanelle :) They had chips and soda and cake to eat. There aren’t any long
tables at the church, so we ate on a ping-pong table. Pres. Hugo was
driving back from Lisbon, so he didn’t get there for another 45 minutes or so.
But when he arrived, the party started hopping. By then, we were up to 14
people. He went around and talked to everybody, and then he opened his little
girl’s backpack and pulled out a variation of Jenga. He set it up and called
everyone to come up and play. They got pretty excited and said “Ohhhhh!”
while people were pulling out a piece, cheered if they got it, and laughed when
it crashed. It was fun to watch them.
After the party and the dish-washing (no paper goods), this cute family, the Cardoso’s, practiced a song they were doing for Sacrament meeting the next day. They moved to Portugal from Cabo Verde seven years ago and they’re awesome! The dad’s actually a physical therapist at the hospital and the wife speaks some English and is SO nice. She said to me, “You can speak English to me, if you want to. Then I can practice my English. But if you want to speak Portuguese to practice your Portuguese, that’s ok too.” Eileen is my new best friend!!
Ok, she’s my only friend right now, but
she’s a good one.
The next day was our first Sunday. There were 24 people at church and the elders were stoked about it. Pres. Hugo conducted, bore his testimony, and passed the sacrament. The Cardoso’s performed their song. It was really sweet. 💗 It was Mother's Day in Portugal, so after Sacrament meeting, they said they had special thing for the mothers. Not sure why, but they had us leave the chapel and go in the Sunday School room to give it to us. They gave us these cute mugs with chocolate-covered almonds. (Your fave, Aub!) The women were really excited.
Then they had us all sit down to take a picture.
These gals are the auxiliary presidents.
From left to right is Eileen, the Primary president, the Young Women’s
president, and the Relief Society president. Good, faithful women!
After that, Pres. Hugo taught Sunday
School. He’s a goer! He used Elder Q. for an object lesson about the weight of
sin and the relief of repentance. His arm was shaking by the end.
After church, we came home, had a quick
lunch, and took off to Chavez, which is about an hour north. They have a little
group of 5 people there and no Melchizedek priesthood holders, so the elders go
there every week to do the sacrament and give a message.
The scenery was green and beautiful at
first, but then it got rocky and sage brushy like Southern Utah. Chavez is 5
miles from the border of Spain. We’re thinking Spain for our next P-day. 😬
The people in Chavez were excited to see us! They were way more talkative and friendly then the members in Vila Real. I guess they’re just happy to see anybody because they’re so isolated.
They kept
asking if we were going come every week.
Monday P-day, we took a break and went on our first legit walk. We saw this sign and thought “Utah”! So we stopped to take a picture. This nice girl took it for us and she explained that it was a University. It’s the only university in the city and has about 7000 students. We decided to take a little walk-about on campus. It was an Interesting combination of old European and modern architecture. This is a little church built in 1644.
Or 1865, depending on how I translated the plaque. 😬
Here’s a field right below one of the
campus buildings. If you zoom in, to the right, you’ll see four horses. A
little horse pasture on campus, why not?
Dad
went rogue and went in gates that weren’t locked and walked up on the roof of
the university gate-keeper. Then came down and found the guy was inside. They
had a nice chat. 🙃
We
stopped at the store and got a few groceries. We can’t buy too much because
refrigerator is shorter than I am. We thought of you, Kalie, when we saw this
huge selection of tomatoes.
We
are so happy that they have good groceries here! That’s a game changer!!
We
spotted this lady walking down the street. We’ve only seen this in Africa.
Then we came home and worked on the apartment, organizing and putting all the kitchen stuff away, moving an office bookcase to hold dishes because there aren’t enough cupboards. I was way excited to finally have the kitchen counters and table cleared off! 🎉 Found the rug for $4!
We’re
feeling civilized…:)
We’ve
learned to take short showers, so the other person doesn’t have to take a cold
shower when the hot water tank runs out. Or learned to never be the second
person…😁
We
sure do love you guys!! Thanks for being so helpful and supportive with this
mission. We really, really appreciate it!
❌⭕️❌⭕️,
Mom
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