Week 8

Week 8

February 12, 2018

Hey everyone! I figured out the weird typing thing with these keyboards. Anyways, living here is just so crazy to me. I never thought of living in Europe and now I am! Anyways, I'll talk more about the lifestyle at the end of my email.
Feb 6th. Started with a group facetime with a bunch of other missionaries throughout Portugal, and it was pretty cool, cause I saw a lot of new people, and some of my MTC friends including my good buddy Elder Taylor. Then we went out contacting and knocking doors. After that, we went for dinner at a members! Their kid was watching Calliou, which in Portugal it's called Ruca, which was funny.

The next day we were getting denied a bunch, but then we taught a man named Joel, he's around 22 and has a sick stash. Anyways, we taught him the first and second lesson and he said it answered all his questions he had. We gave him a Book of Mormon and set a baptismal date for March 3rd!! This was also a good day because I fixed the sink... which I accidentally clogged a day or two before, but it was okay because I fixed it!

The next day, Feb 8th was also great! Elder Hernandez and I went out contacting with a boy (Diego) who will soon be a missionary. When we were knocking doors we got invited to come in! We taught Cardina and she really liked the lesson we taught! Then, to end the day, we had dinner with another family!

Feb 9th was a hard day. It was a hard day from the start, but got even harder once we walked into a huge sports store and there was absolutely nothing to do with basketball anywhere. Just soccer or as the Portuguese call it, Futebol. Anyways, we did 5hrs straight of contacting at the end of the day and nobody wanted to hear us, but I felt a prompting to walk back to downtown (which is where we just came from, and it was super far away) but anyways we started walking back for downtown. Then we met a man, and set up a meeting, and also when we were in downtown the second person we talked to, we made his day. It was his first day in Portugal, and he was alone because all his family was moving there later than him. He is a member of our church and knew nobody here, where the church was, he didn't know anything! So we were able to give him phone numbers of the people, directions to the church and everything he needed! It made my night so much better, I feel blessed that I was able to listen to the prompting to go back to downtown.

Feb 10th, finally got to shoot a basketball... even though the hoop was 8ft tall aha. But I started dunking and all the little Portuguese kids were going crazy because they probably hadnºt seen anyone dunk in person. Even if the hoop was 8ft. Then we had to open the church for a ward party. Six of us missionaries had a meeting, but before the meeting I was playing pingpong against the kids and adults in the ward. I won like 11 games to seven in a row then had to leave to the meeting. It was great aha. When we went out to contact in the night, we had to go back early because my companion really hurt his knee earler in the day. So I studied the Book of Mormon for a long time.

Feb 11th, Started with church, which is always just so great. Then we had an amazing lunch with a member. Following that we walked for 7hrs straight contacting in the rain and ended up teaching a good lesson to a woman in the middle of the day! We went with a member boy, Lucas, and yeah!

It's crazy to be here, as I've said before. I really can't talk to the people here that well. I live in an apartment building as does basically everyone else here, and it's always so freezing. But it's getting warmer because the days are getting warmer. I haven't eaten a whole bunch of fish yet, but that's probably because I'm not super close to the coast! The fish will start to come. Still as I walk around people stare at me, it's hillarious to walk by cars stuck at a red light because all the passengers are leaning over and squinting just to look at me. Once there were 4 or 5 cars where everyone was doing that ahah!

I want to challenge anyone who read this email to be perfect every 13th day of the month (that's tomorrow btw). That's my Dad's challenge but now I'm challenging all of you! Love you all so much! For more pics look at the blog.

Elder out
Mamba out  

 Parks with other Elders and Sisters from his area.


Parks' church building.  The soccer field in frong of the building is actually the parking lot too.


The Church parking lot/field.




Parks on a rainy day.


Parks at the entrance to the city of Braga.


Parks at the entrance to the city of Braga.



Elder Parks Stewart Layton
Portugal Porto Mission
Rua de Amália de Luazes, No 23, Sala 1
4200-052 Porto
Portugal 

parks.layton@myldsmail.net

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