Temples & Tourists- part 2

Hi kids,

Yeesh! I don’t write for weeks and then I write a novel. 🤦‍♀️ Well, here’s Part 2…

After the Peña Palace, we went to the Regalerra Palace. It has a more “traditional” look.  

Fancy entry bridge into the castle

Tiny chapel used by the royal family

After wandering a bit, we found the Initiation Well (Dante’s Inferno). It is such a unique thing! Here’s the view going down. Down, down, down…

And the view looking from th bottom to the top.

Then we explored the gardens and found this rock formation bridge and tunnels.

Then we stopped in at the cutest little restaurant and had a really yummy meal with rice pudding for dessert (thought of you, Jas!) 

We had walked a lot that day, so when we saw the tuk tuks, Dad said “Let’s take one back to,our car.” And we did. Mr. Toad ‘s wild ride down the tiny, narrow streets - inches from the cars. 

The next day, we headed to Coimbra. It has the oldest university in Portugal - founded in 1290.

Crazy huh? 
We went up 184 teeny, circular stairs to the top of the clock tower. 

Then we went to the chapel and Voilá!, it was being used for a wedding! So, we hung around for 15-20 minutes, so we could see the bride’s arrival. And a glimpse of  the inside of the chapel. The flower kids were cute and their mom made sure everything was tucked in and took lots of pictures.

(Maybe I’m Portuguese ;)

Since we couldn’t go inside the chapel, we visited the student prison. This was a real thing until the 1800’s! If students broke the rules or damaged a book, they had to go to prison. It was pretty bleak inside but the ceilings were so cool! They were made of rough-hewn sticks placed together in a cool pattern.

This lecture hall reminded me of something out of Harry Potter. Amazing tiled ceiling. It was huge! 

A typical classroom. They still using the original wood seats - but with cushions now.

They had a science exhibit and dad told me to stand here. I didn’t realize what it was til I saw the front of it. It made me think of Jeff Goldblum. ^^

An hour later, the wedding was finished and we went inside the chapel. The hand-painted ceiling was gorgeous!

 The organ pipes

We walked around a bit. Here’s a fun triangle building that reminded me of the skinny, triangle one in New York.

We think these were student apartments.

We left Coimbra, but we stopped on the way, in another city, Viseu, for something to eat. And we happened to see these guys. The shorter elder is from Puerto Rico and he’s a bundle of energy and enthusiasm. The taller elder is from Brazil and has only been here for 3 weeks. Both of them were so nice! It was fun to visit with them for a bit. 

We looked and looked for a restaurant to eat at, but none of them were open. The Portuguese like to eat late (and stay up late) and restaurants don’t open until 7:30 pm, after closing at 3:00 pm for “rest time.” We finally found a cute restaurant that looked like it was 100 years old inside, with stone walls and really low ceilings. They were still getting the tables ready, but welcomed us in.  All the tables were set with paper bags. Inside was our plate, silverware, and napkin. We don’t know if it’s the restaurant’s tradition, or a COVID thing, but it looked really fun, like you had a surprise waiting for you. 😃  The food was so good! Most of the time, the meat here is quite tough and bland, but this was like a tender pot-roast with so much flavor. Maybe our best meal yet. The waiter saw me trying to take a selfie and offered to take the picture. But he cut dad out of the one with the food. Not many people have I-phones here… 🤷‍♀️

After dinner, we headed home, with the sunset outlining the wind turbines.

The next day was a 5th Sunday, so I told the sisters in Primary to go to the adult meeting and I’d do Primary with the 2 out of 3 kids that were there. They’re both so funny. The older one, Cecilia, is 5 years old and learns English at her kindergarten, so we play “Que isso?” (What’s this?) and she tells me the word in English. If she doesn’t know, she shrugs her shoulders and then I tell her the word and she repeats it. She’s a little parrot. Marie Julia is 3 and is Pres. Hugo’s little girl. She’s as good-natured and energetic as her dad, so I have to keep her distracted and watch the door, or she’ll zip out. 

After church, we came home, grabbed a quick bite and then went to pick up the elders to go to our little group in Chaves, an hour away. I was driving and took a corner too sharp and hit the curb with the tire. I must’ve caught the edge just right because it slashed it. Five minutes later, we got to the elders and it was dead flat. :( How any people does it take to change a tire? Apparently, three. :)   The elders were way nice to get down and do the dirty work and put the spare on. We laid our grocery sacks out to keep their clothes clean. 

We had to call one of the members, and ask him to call everybody (all 5 people :) and tell them that church was cancelled because our car couldn’t drive that far on our toy-sized spare tire.

And that was our “going to the temple & being a tourist” week! 

Love you a lot!! 

❤️ Mom

Temples & Tourists- part 1

 Hey ya‘ll, 

I’m still catching up, so I’m trying a new strategy - start with the last two weeks and work my back til I catch up. 

Ok, I wrote that LAST Sunday, and didn’t have time to finish the letter, so pretend you’re reading this a week ago. I’m just going to start sending random emails, at random times, until I get caught up.  

Well, it turns out that I wrote that yesterday, and was almost done at 2 am, and then the email disappeared. Ugh. I think I had too many pictures, so I’m gonna send it in two parts. Here we go…

Last week’s highlights:   Apparently, Elder Williams makes….drum roll please….chocolate chip cookies! And they’re really, really good!! So they called and asked if we wanted to come over for hot cc cookies last and Dad had the car keys in his hand before we hung up the phone. Not really, but he was ready quickly. :) I told them that since they were making cookies, I’d make grilled ham & cheese sandwiches for lunch. So we packed up and headed over to their apartment.  

That night I taught my first English class. The elders did a post on FB, offering free English classes with a “native speaker.” Ha! Seven people came and six were non-members, so that was good. They were all super nice. I had translated the phrases that I was teaching into Portuguese, so that I could explain them, but the elders helped out when it got complicated. I like the lessons that I used in Mozambique better because the manual had the Portuguese words alongside the English words and phrases.  But the church has come up with this new program called English Connect and it’s used world-wide, so all the lessons are only in English. :/ 

Our way home, we were starving, and it was almost 9 pm, so we decided to stop and get something to eat. In the town square, there was this group that looked like something from Harry Potter. The university students were having a “reading week” before exams. During this week, they’re required to wear their robes whenever they go outside. Portugal really is where J. K. Rowling got the idea for the robes in Harry Potter.

I asked these guys if they would take a picture with me and they said, “Sure!”

 

We found a small little restaurant that was open. Like we’ve mentioned before, people generally aren’t super friendly here, but they were really welcoming at this place. Dad ordered beef and I ordered Dorado, a type of fish. The guy brought the appetizers, always olives (they grow them here) and bread. We’ve learned to ask if it’s included with the meal or not, cuz usually it’s not, and we’ve paid $1 for a piece of bread or $1.50 for one of those little butter pats. One thing I hadn’t seen before are the little serving dishes for the olives. They have a place for the pits. 

Outside minutes after he brought the appetizers, he stopped by with the plate to show me the fish that was soon going to be my fish. We thought that was so cute that he showed us before they cooked it. I wish I would’ve taken a “before” picture, but here’s an ”after” picture - head and all! 

It was really good! Here’s the “after, after” picture: 

The cook was watching me to see if I liked it and I kept complimenting her and saying how delicious it was. I took a secret picture of her in the kitchen. Dad really wanted a picture of us together because she was so short and typically Portuguese. He kept saying, “I think she’s shorter than you!” While we paid, she came out of the kitchen, so Dad asked her for a picture. She was shorter than me…

The next day, Wednesday, was District Meeting in Bragança. Delton, our cute (and one of three) Young Adults, came to the meeting to discuss the YA activity that we’re planning to have in a couple of weeks. Delton is from Angola, speaks English, and came here to go to university. He was baptized 3 years ago and is SO enthusiastic about the church. He’s a great missionary. He has a FB page about the church and translates older Conference talks with Portuguese sub-titles. He actually sent us an email before we left Utah, telling how happy he was that we were coming to serve here. We love Delton! Anyway, he’s basically planning the whole activity and we told him that we’d help with whatever he needed. I offered to make a cake and he was excited about that, so cake it is! As he was leaving, he mentioned that he was going to Lisbon the next day and we asked what for. He said, “I am going to the temple.” We were so happy for him! I told him that we wanted to come too. 

He was going through for the first time and so was José Friere. He’s about our age and he and his wife have been members for over 30 years, but his wife became less active, so he’s waited all this time for her to become active to go to the temple. A few weeks ago, he decided that he didn’t want to wait and wanted to go to the temple, but he was worried that it would be a sad experience without her there. The elders asked us to come to their temple lesson prep with him. We talked about it and told him that he prob would feel some sadness that she wasn’t there, but that the happiness he felt would be exceed that and that he’d be a light and example to his wife. He was still pondering about that, so we were were happily surprised that he’d decided to go and made the arrangements so quickly. 

After the meeting, we had lunch at Kebab. Here, Kebabs aren’t like our shish kabobs. They’re a Middle Eastern thug where they have the meat on huge skewers and slice it off and make gyros or serve it sliced with French fries and rice. (Those are sides with every meal here.) I thought it was cool how they shave the meat off with this electric shaver. The guy runs it from top to bottom of the skewer and it shaves small pieces off. 

The elders have this thing where they all touch their nose when we sit down. (Elder Q’s idea of course. :)  The last one to touch their nose says the prayer. 

They have a huge chess set in the food court at the mall and while we’re we’re leaving, they were setting up for a kids chess club or tournament, or something. 

We thought a noisy mall was kind of a strange place for a chess tournament, but food’s close. 

The elders were out of propane, and had to take cold showers that day, so we stopped on our way home and got a fresh tank for them. 

After we dropped the elders off, I asked dad about us going to the temple the next day. He didn’t think that we should because we weren’t “invited.” I told him that I thought they’d be thrilled to have us there. So we thought about it some more and about 7:00 pm that night, we decided to go. I love spontaneous, dad not so much. :)  We weren’t even sure what session they were in, so we texted and called Delton, but he didn’t answer. So, I called one of the senior sisters that works in the temple.  She didn’t know the schedule, but gave me the number for the temple President. We called him and he told us the time and we signed up for that season. Yay! Then the packing began! We decided to make a trip of it and not come back until Saturday. We got hotel reservations the next morning and took off! It’s a 4 hour drive to a Lisbon and we had to be at the temple by 1:30 pm. So allowing for getting lost, it’s a 4 ½ hour drive. We texted Delton that morning and let him know that we were coming. He texted back, “That’s wonderful, I am so excited. I’m will see you there and have a nice trip.” I then texted him to please let the others know too, and he said, “I already told them.” That’s our Delton.

We got to the temple and found them. They were all really happy that we had come and it was so wonderful to be with them, esp, with Delton and José Friere.

Dad and I were the witness couple for the endowment session, and seeing those people all in white made me a bit teary. After the session, Delton wanted to go to the baptistry, while the others did sealings, because he had brought his grandfather’s name to be baptized and confirmed. So, dad and I went with him. After the baptism, the counselor in the temple presidency came in the confirmation room with us. After Delton was confirmed for his grandfather, the counselor showed him how to perform the confirmations and Delton did more names. Then some female names came in and I acted as proxy. When Delton laid his hands on my head and started to bless me, the Spirit was so strong, I started to cry. It was pretty amazing that this young guy, new member, who just went through the temple 20 minutes ago, was blessing and confirming me for others!  

While we in the baptistry, a group of 30 ish teenagers came in - most of them in cut-off shorts and t-shirts, looking pretty haggard. They were an HFY (Humanitarian for Youth) group coming back from 2 weeks in Cabo Verde. They stopped by the temple to do baptisms on their way back to the States. It was cool to watch them come into the temple and them come into the baptistry all dressed in white. A transformation. 

Here’s our little temple group: 

Jośe is the guy to the left of Delton. We asked him how he felt and he said,  “Brilhanté, como uma luz!” - “Brilliant, like a light.” His face was glowing, so that was an accurate description.

 

It was about 6:30 pm by then, and they were traveling 30 minutes to stay at a one of their friends’ house and coming back the next day, so we said our goodbyes. 

We had asked the three couples in Lisbon if they wanted to go to dinner that night. Bro.,Erickson (the office couple) was sick, so they couldn’t come, but we went with the Seibold’s - they’re the Self-reliance couple, which I think is the most awesome assignment cuz they travel all over Portugal doing Self Reliance classes in the various branches and wards & also teach Emergency Preparedness & English - how fun would that be??   The other couple is the Wilcox’ and they work in the temple, which isn’t a bad gig either cuz the temple is only open for ½ day on Wednesdays and Thursdays and then Friday and Saturday. So they always have Monday’s and Tuesdays off and do little excursions to different places. Dad figured out that he’s Brad Wilcox’s older brother. They don’t look anything alike - he said people say that alot. Ha! Both super nice couples and it was so great to speak English! They took us down to the waterfront to eat. We were in the big city, not like our little Vila Real. :) It was a fun evening!! 

Y’all know how dad likes a view. Here’s the view out our hotel window with this huge, weird concrete thing in the room. 

The next day, we headed to Sintra. We made to 2 of the 3 castles. This one, Peña Palace, was so striking and colorful! Not at all like the castles we’ve seen before. It reminded us more of Morocco, than anything European.

Loved this big arched entry - it looked like every castle entry that I pictured in my mind when I read fairy tales. 

And the stonework was incredible. Figures and flowers and spikes and gargoyles. 

The dining room with the painted tile and stone ceiling: 

Beautiful tiled courtyard: 

The carved bed, the ceiling, the walls, the everything! 

Zoom in on the stone carvings on the right and the tiled walls & domes

I’m sending this before it crashes again. Part 2 coming up! 

Mom