Week 47- BEST CHRISTMAS EVER!!!!

 This was an AWESOME Christmas Eve party at the Bishops house! 
Bishop Suzarte and his wife are the BOMB!

 Isn't this a beautiful setting?!

 Our pile of "Secret Santa" gifts. (White Elephant)

 Bishop got a nightgown and cap for his gift! Hahaha! He loved it!!!

 Us girls!

 The office Elders were driving all over the mission delivering Christmas packages and they showed up at our door dressed like this! Haha! Elders Gunther and Foutz. It was so fun!

 We had 4 Sisters sleep at our house for Christmas Eve. The Sisters from Mafra partied it up with us and we made a MEGABED! We were a little excited! Sister Bakker was OVERJOYED! Haha ='D

Our tree with all our presents.

We made crepes!

 This is another party. We ate lunch on Christmas day at Irma Lidia's home. Wonderful food (We ate curry, delicious!) and even better company. <3

 African doll

 Serves her right, she stole my camera. =D

Elder Nogueira

 This is Irma Lidia in her 20's.

 And now. Isn't she so pretty!

Christmas night we went to the Lee's house to Skype with our families and enjoy amazing food! The Lee's are awesome.

 BEST CHRISTMAS EVER!!!!! 

(that I was away from my family:))

(Picture by Paige)

 This week we went on division to Mafra. The Sister's there set up a table with wrapped Books of Mormon, lots of cards and free cookies! It was super fun! We talked to every one passing by, sang Portuguese Christmas Hymns until our voices hurt, handed out cookies and presents and met some amazing people! It was really fun, I loved it! Sister Luciano and Sister Tilton are so creative!

 In Mafra

Snapped this picture out of the train window. Portugal's beauty is unreal.

My Letter Home:

He Gives Me Strength

This week was awesome and Christmasy! We had many member meals and games played.

Skype was fun. I cried a lot. I love my family so much. When I first saw them, they were all huddled together wearing their Portugal shirts and I just lost it! It was hard to say goodbye to them, but it was kind of a relief to think I only have one more skype with them. It is an emotional rollercoaster ride. 

So last night we decided to go and visit a less active woman in our ward. She doesn’t really come to church, but I think it has to do with the fact that she has two little boys that have a really hard time staying quiet. One of them has autism and he is a little on the wild side. I feel kinda bad for her because she is always with them in a tiny, filled apartment. We were there trying to watch the Restoration video and the boys were kinda getting wild. We could tell that she was getting really stressed. All of a sudden she gets really quiet and calls her husband on the phone. She tells him she is about to have an "attack". I was sitting right next to her. Then she starts shaking. It started with her hands then her eyes rolled back into her head and she started thrashing. The little boys started crying and freaking out. The only thought that came into my mind was "she CANNOT hit her head". She was trying to smash her head on the rock wall. I grabbed her head and held her tight. She totally flipped out, trying to bite me and hit me. I literally don’t know how I had the strength to hold her down. I honestly believe God gave me the strength in that moment to help. I was completely calm. She did not hit her head. Eventually she was lying on the ground and I was sitting by her. She calmed down and the attack wore off. I was just stroking her hair and telling her my story of when I brought baby ducks to church. We called a ward member and he ran over to help us. He gave her a blessing and she seemed okay. We knew her husband was on the way, so we felt good. It was the scariest thing that has happened to me on the mission. But I know we were there in that moment for a reason. I know God gave me that strength and the ability to stay calm in that moment. He makes me stronger. I can do hard things because he gives me the strength. I love Him.

Love you all! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas! <3

Sister Barron

Week 46-FELIZ NATAL!!!!

 The ENTIRE mission (accept for those serving on the Azores) got together for a Christmas party!!! We had a blast!

 I reunited with Sister McChesney at the  Christmas party!!! So happy! I miss her so much!

 This week we went on a division to Cascais. I snagged this picture while we were walking down the street with our luggage.

 Super cool artsy grafiti in Cascais.

 

We made German pancakes. =P

This Prep Day we deep cleaned our house. You wouldn't believe the amounts of things we threw away.  Cloths that were from the 90's! 

I'm not even joking.

 We found these onsies in our black hole closet that is full of past Sister relics. The goal was to take the "Most Perfect Christmas Picture". You tell me, did we achieve???

 My Letter Home:

Merry Christmas to everyone!

I FINISHED THE BOOK OF MORMON IN PORTUGUESE. I started it way back when I went to the Azores. Yeah, it’s been a while. But I finally did it! I AM NOW FLUENT in the language and I love it!

This week we had our mission Christmas party! It was so fun to see all my mission friends and realize that I have been out here long enough to have mission friends! We were involved in a musical number that I have heard was put on Youtube. It’s in Portuguese, but just so you all know it is really funny:) We had a big dinner with everyone on the mission and enjoyed a lot of talented missionaries singing and playing instruments.

We went on a division this week in Cascais. It is a cool area,  it has a lot of tourism. I went out with Sister Alexander. She is realllyyyy old on the mission and about to go home, so it was weird to think that I was the one helping her. But it went so well. I totally felt guided by the spirit to know what to say to her in the right moment. She has a lot of responsibilities, but I was able to help her to know that she TOTALLY can do this. And the craziest part was that she was helping me too. She has been an Sister Training Leader in the past, and she totally helped me. I was feeling like I didn’t know how to help other sisters in my calling. I felt like I wasn’t doing anything. But she made me feel better and know that I can do this! How things are working out with all the Sisters and STLs in the mission, I will probably stay STL for a while. Almost all of them are going home in these next few transfers.

The last Sunday before Christmas was fun. The highlights were our surprise musical number (we found out we would be singing literally 2 seconds before the piano man started), and the irmã that gave us a whole chocolate cake! You literally never know what will happen at church in Portugal!

We are super excited for CHRISTMAS! Talk to you sooooon, family!

Sister Barron

Week 45- The Baker Man is Dangerous. Dangerously COOL!

 This is Sister De Souza! She is a new missionary from Brazil. We worked together for a day! 

It was super fun!

 This is Sintra, part of our area! There are three castles in the distance if you look closely at this photo.

 It is so beautiful here! We were trying not to look like tourists and still snatch pictures of our area. It is gawgeous!

 When we were in Sintra, we found a toucan?!?!?! It was cool............and whatever.

I discovered another new fruit this week! It is like an interesting type of apple. Very good!

A pretty road in Sintra. 

Sister Bakker found this fruit on the way to the Dukes house.

My Letter Home:

So you remember last week how I told you all about our bread hookup? Well, the whole thing has gone totally bazerko. Without fail, every night, he gives us TONS of bread. Muffins, pastries, loaves, cakes...everything! And we literally cannot eat it all!  It is as if he thinks we have a superhuman ability to eat bread or something! Haha nooo.... So once our freezer was full, we started giving it out to people. There are a lot of people in our ward who could use the help, so it is actually a cool opportunity it give to people at this Christmas time. We still have hope that our bread friend will come to church someday. He said he will once he has a day off on Sunday. What a great guy he is!

I got to go on my first division as an Sister Training Leader this week. I went with Sister De Souza, a missionary fresh from Brazil. She was so cute. She has a big heart and totally wants to become the best missionary she can. We got lost a few times, but I did my best to not make her stressed out.  I was cool with doing whatever. It was interesting to be with her and remember when I was a new missionary. I didn’t talk at all, being new with the lauguage. But she talked a lot! Totally different experience! I really liked it though. Hopefully she learned something haha, I don’t feel like I did anything. I helped her make a plan to learn English and bought them a mini Christmas tree for their apartment! It was fun seeing a new area! It seemed like they are in the middle of Africa. Amadora has a lot of people from Africa.

So during the division, Sister Bakker and Sister Donahoo stayed in Mem Martins and they headed up to Sintra to look up a reference. One day we just got a text from the church with an address. Instead of a name, it had the words "Duque da Bragança" haha okay?.... So they looked around and long story short THE ADDRESS WAS THE ADDRESS OF A REAL DUKE. I AM GOING TO TEACH A DUKE. IF PORTUGAL WAS STILL A MONARCHY, HE WOULD BE THE KING. What?! I got to go later and see his house and it is huge! We are so pumped! We will teach anyone, from a homeless man to a duke! They marked an appointment for in the future. I am so psyched that I get to go! Heehee

We had our  SISTER POWER MEETING! It was really fun to sit down in a circle and talk about what we thought our zone needed as Sisters. It was super spiritual. We didn’t plan out super well what we would say, we decided we wanted a little bit more of a discussion. We left a lot of the time open for the Sisters to talk. I love them all so much. They all have really useful points of view.

This week was actually really hard. Not a lot of people wanted to talk to us. But we are excited to keep going and celebrate Christmas like none other. It will be wonderful! :)

Love you all!

Sister Barron

PS. One night we were walking and we literally came up on a car accident as it happened. Within a minute, there was a fire truck and an ambulance and a tow truck there at the same minute. We were just standing there watching, there really wasn’t anything for us to do. But eventually we left and kept walking, and we passed a woman. I remember looking at her face and thinking I had never seen someone so tired in my whole life. She had a baby in her arms and was pushing a baby carriage with another child and a bunch of groceries on the handle bars. Simultaneously, Sister Bakker and I turned around and looked after her. She had to stop like every 10 steps to readjust the baby. We decided she needed our help and we ran after her. She was soooo grateful for our help. Sister Bakker pushed the carriage and I talked to her. She was so exhausted. We walked with her all the way to the taxi. She ended up taking our card and giving us her address and number. She lives in the Elders area, so we passed it to them. Hopefully her heart was softened and she will listen to their message. I felt the spirit so strong as a bunch of people were running by to catch the train, but we were there with this woman. Her Heavenly Father looked down on her in that moment and decided she needed help. He sent us. I am so glad she was humble enough to accept help. I know it totally made our day. 

A part of Sister Bakker's letter home:
So I go on a division with the sister of Amadora. Sister Donahoo came and served with me in my area, Mem Martins. Well our first plan of the day was to go to Sintra to find this weird reference that we got from someone in Porto. So we go and we are walking along and asking people how to get to this weird road and they are all like "sempre em frente sempre em frente" or in English "always in front" So we are walking on this twisty mountain road in the middle of nowhere when we get to this random city. And we are like wow we made it!! So then we ask people for the next road that we are looking for and they are like what do you need on that road and we are like, we are looking for Duque. And people got so excited when we said that and we are like what the heck. What is Duque? So we get to the road and we are like ok I see no house named Duque. But we found the number and we ask this little old spanish lady "o que é Duque?" and she gets all excited and tells us in half Spanish half Portuguese that the duke is not home right now but that his brother is and that we needed to just touch the doorbell. She then showed us where the door was. In that moment Sister Donahoo and I look at each other and are like OH MY GOSH IT IS A DUKE!!!! So we walked like 1 hour to this HUGE house like soooo big we thought that it was like an old mansion that was turned into like rooms for tourists or something. BUT no it was a house that a duke lives in!!! So we talk to this lady and tell her that the duke wants to talk to us and she is like well you need an appointment. Call this number. And she gives us this weird number. So we leave and we call the number and this lady is talking to me and is really, really formal and is like who gave you this number and I am like uhhh Orlanda... and she goes "AHHHH SENHORA ORLADA!! ok ok we will make you an appointment and call back!" Soooo ya that is right we are totally going to teach a duke!!! And so we ask around a little and find out that if Portugal was a monarchy he would be in line for king!! WHAT!!!!!! SOOO COOLLLL!!!