Week 15

April 02, 2018

Week 15

April 2, 2018

Hey everyone, pretty sweet week! If you read anything from this email, read my challenge which is near the bottom of my email! This week was dope because on Sunday we had General Conference.

March 27th - We went to IKEA for lunch, which is cheap and tastes like home made food so that was great! Then an investigater cancelled on us. Then we met with Kebob... for like a minute because he got called by his teacher and had to go to class hahah.

March 28th - It rained a lot! We went to IKEA again for lunch ahah. Then we went to work. We were on the grind for hours, but we didn’t find anyone to teach.

March 29th - We contacted in the morning! Then I went and got a haircut. On the way home from that, I found twenty bucks in some random place on the street. I gave half of it to Elder Hernandez. It was perfect because that covered for our travel fee to get to Porto (which we had to do later that night). Right after I found the money, we had to travel to Porto and stay the night with some other Elders. We had a meeting the next day with a lot of missionaries and the train was shutdown the next day! So we went to Porto and stayed with Elder Meira and Elder Patterson!! Or as I call him, Joel aha. It was so crazy to live someone who knows 100% exactly what life is like back home. It was fun to talk about people, life plans, and just everything! I updated him on stuff about Calgary, and the people as well! It was a great experience.

March 30th - The next day we walked to the Zone Conference, my zone (Porto North) was joined by the Porto zone. That was unreal because I saw three of my best buddies on the mish! Elder Howard who was in the MTC with me! Love that guy. Elder Hunter again, he's an unreal guy and a lifelong friend. And Elder Throolin!!!! I had not seen him in 9 weeks and we ran and gave each other a big hug! That guy is unreal, love him. It’s just too bad that Elder Taylor wasn’t there... I wish. But my homies from the MTC are special, the bond created at the MTC between us is crazy, and I know that they will be lifelong friends and we will visit from time to time. In my MTC group it was me and 9 other guys. Once my mission joins then we are all in the same mission. But also at the Conference I met lots of new people who I got along with really well, a couple guys told me I would be a dope companion, so that’s always good to here aha! We finished the day off by getting chicken!

March 31st - Worked in the morning, but then it was General Conference in the night for us, so we watched that. When we were sustaining President Nelson the spirit was super strong!

April 1st - We were basically in the church all day watching Conference, but we went for lunch at a member’s house, which was awesome! The kid there was watching Shrek and he put English subtitles on and told me that he did that so that I could understand and watch with him. It was awesome to see how caring he was, for only being around 5. In the Sunday afternoon session of conference, I had a sweet setup to watch it, I'll send a picture of that. When President Nelson anounced the temples and called out Banglaroo India, Elder Karthiyean started going crazy! That’s his City and the first temple in India. I witnessed pure joy aha.

The week overall was awesome, General Conference was super great especially because I payed a lot more attention than I have in the past... But still it was awesome, and countless times I would get goosbumps or a warm feeling from within me.

A cool story from this week was when Elder Ulysses Soares spoke. He used to be a Mission President here in Portugal! He said that he got his call 6 weeks before he was supposed to be there... That gave him 6 weeks to get the Visa work done. Usually that visa work takes 6-8 months he said. But the General Authority who called him and said, “Do you have faith this will all work out?". Elder Soares replied with a yes. 6 weeks later he was in Portugal with his wife, serving. The cool thing is that this is basically the EXACT same story as what happened to me. When I got my Mission call in August I was supposed to recieve Visa work papers. I did not receive them, but at the time I had no idea I was supposed to receive them. December 6th 13 days before I left, we contacted the church asking about my Visa work, and where it was. My Mom and I replied that we never recieved anything. The church accidently did not send me my stuff to get to Portugal or it never got to me. I was in the same situation as Elder Soares. We got my papers and did our best to do everything super fast, which even included a plane trip to Vancouver because that's where the Portugal Consulate is. Anyways, I did all that I could. I prayed every night for it, I had a feeling there was a reason I was called to Portugal at that exact time. I had faith I would make it. Between the 2 weeks I had at home to prepare it, I saw miracles happen to speed up the work, such as workers personally doing a 2 month process in January 30 minutes. Anyways, 4 weeks into my time at the MTC, I heard the news my Visa went through and I would get to go to Portugal on time! Within those 6 weeks of short notice I was able to make it. The exact same as Elder Soares. I know it was not just because we worked quickly to get the stuff done, that helped, but God had a hand in speeding things along. He wanted me here. When I heard Elder Soares' talk I had such a strong connecting and it really made me reflect back on my experience, and renotice the blessing that I received.

My challenge isn't hard, but you can do it if you aren't lazy. I challenge you to email me at parks.layton@myldsmail.net about your life and how things are going. Even if it is only a short email, I would love to hear from whoever reads this! And for my missionary friends on my email list, I challenge you to add me to your list, and email about how things are going.

Great week for ya boi! Eu sei este igreja e verdadeiro, e por meio de Jesus Cristo, nos podemos ser limpo. Eu estou muito muito grato por todos os coisas eu tenho em minha vida. Eu amo minha familia, e tambem amo meu amigos e amigas. Eu quero agradecer todos pessoas em minha vida por esta apoiar em minha vida! Boa semana por voces!

Elder out

Mamba out

The Calgarian sleepover in Portugal - Elder Patterson and Elder Layton