Week 11

Week 11

March 5, 2018

Hey everyone! This week you're gonna find out what it's like to be a missionary when your companion is sick hahah. Overall it actually ended up being a pretty productive week, both spiritually and language wise for myself! In the end of my email I'll talk about a couple of the different things about life here in Portugal.

Tuesday Feb 27th  Started with an online Zone Meeting with a bunch of the other missionaries throughout Portugal, and our Mission President (the man who is in charge of all us missionaries). Then we went out from 5:30 until 10:00. All day it was pouring rain, the little river by our house was overflowing. All day nobody wanted to talk or accept a card from us because it was cold and pouring rain. This was the beginning of Elder Hernandez's sickness.

Feb 28th Poured rain the whole day. Hernandez basically stayed in bed all day. We went out once.  I read from Alma 59-The end of the Book of Mormon in the day. And studied a lot of language so it was actually a great day for me!

March 1 Pouring rain again. Hernandez was sick again. I studied lots of Portuguese, and read all of "The Pearl of Great Price".  The only thing was that I went on splits for an hour and helped a 22 year old (Joao Vito) pick out his baptism outfit. I also helped some people carry couches from one building to another.

March 2nd  Hernandez was still sick, it was still pouring rain, the only thing we did, was have lunch with a member (he's an english teacher so he loved talking in English, a good change hahah). Then we tried to contact people for a bit but then Hernandez was sick again. I read "The Pearl of Great Price" again.

March 3rd  Saturday. I bet you couldn't have guessed it by now but, it was pouring rain again. The Senior Missionaries came to inspect our house. Every 6 weeks is considered a transfer, once at a random time during those six weeks the Senior Missionaries come and inspect your appartment out of a score of 150. So anyways they came and we got a 148-150 which is really good! Because of our high score we get a big chocolate thing at the next Zone Meeting. I actually do a lot of cleaning here and try to make sure everything is looking good! Then we went to Joao Vito's baptism which was dope. Great guy, his brother is already a member and his parents are interested!

March 4th  Woke up, rainy, church, lunch with Bilbo. Then we went out contacting, Hernandez is feeling a little bit better! Our main investigator, Joel, came to all 3 hours of church and will likely get baptized on March 10th! He is so sick actually! In the night, I met some lady named Alba who know where Calgary is! But as she kept talking she said, "It's too bad how the anti-christ is moving into the mountains there though. And he's making the beasts get very ferocious there." I was just in shock and replied saying, "Yeah... too bad about that." I told her we had to go, and we left.

Some things about Portugal, they eat the main meals with forks in the left and and desert with forks in the right hands. They use military format for keeping track of time. The cold here is a humid cold which is way worse than a dry cold... it goes through whatever and however much clothing you have on and chills your bones. I'm really excited for the summer ahah. As I've mentioned before, every house is like an apartment building. More exact, they're like a nice hotel room. There are some houses that are bigger, but majority of people (at least in my area) live in what I consider a really nice hotel room. If you close a door, it automatically locks. When you think you should push a door, you should actually pull it, and vice versa. Theres no pop except for Coke, Pepsi and 7'Up. Everything is carbonated, fruit juice for the most part. When it rains it never stops hah. In some buildings or stores when it's raining hard it sounds like the roof is gonna fall in. There's lots of fruit trees. It's for sure a different lifestyle but it's not bad at all!

My challenge this week is to practice something you want to get better at for at least 30 minutes of your own time every day this week. Whether it be a sport, math, an instrument, I really don't care what it is, but I challenge you to do this. I'll be doing it for a minimum of an hour a day with the Language of Portuguese. Well, basically, I'm practicing it all day, but I challenge you to only 30 mins!

Elder out

Mamba out

Elder Layton and Joao Vito on his baptism day.

Elder Layton and Joao Vito

The stream by Parks' home.

 Elder Layton and Elder Hernandez

Rainy Day

Mailing Address:
Elder Parks Stewart Layton

Portugal Porto Mission

Rua de Amália de Luazes, No 23, Sala 1

4200-052 Porto

Portugal 

Email Address: 

parks.layton@myldsmail.net