10 Month Mark!- The Bread of Life

 We made these T Shirts for the Sisters in our area! We hope they like them! They took a reallyyyy long time to make.....

pretty much half our Prep-Day. We bartered the man in the Chinese store down 5 euros!

 This is us eating lunch at an Indian Restaurant  The food was amazing.

 We got to help this little girl take out her braids. We had fun.

This was the EAGLE!!! It was majestic!

I drew a cool nativity for our apartment.

This is our sweet Christmas set up! 

We live a fancy life.

 Here are some pics of our apartment. 

There is a huge pile of cloths left from past Sisters who have lived here and we wear them occasionally.....aka every day. We are really sick of our cloths. Haha! SCORE!

 Our neighbor friend, the baker gave us this bread. It is called Bolo Rei (or King Cake) and it is basically a fruit cake on steroids. But I like it A LOT! It is really different and good!

He also gave us some really good bread with olives in it. We got some sweet hookups!

My Letter Home:

Things that happened this week:

-I went to my first mission counsel! It was so cool to hear about how the mission is doing as a whole.

-I went to the biggest mall in Portugal and it was sickkkk!

- We were walking down the street and there was a huge Christmas fair going on and this man yells "Hey you, American girl, come here!" and he hands me a leather glove and plops an EAGLE on my arm! Ummm heyyy there! But it was so amazing. Yeah, I held an eagle! Sister Bakker did it too, even though she is funny and is like deathly afraid of all birds. She totally conquered her fear!

-I witnessed the broadcast of the groundbreaking for the Portugal Lisbon Temple! Totally felt chills. I am part of the army that fought for this temple! We can totally tell that Satan does not want this to happen, but it is HAPPENING! We are so excited! This temple will change everythingg....

-We did a "blizzard" for a sister who struggles to come to church and taped paper snowflakes on her door. It was cute! We miss her and need her at church! <3

-I HIT MY 10 MONTH MARK!!!

-We made "American cookies" for the young women in our ward for mutual and they all freaked out. =D

-There is an American family in our ward (the parents both served missions in Portugal and now they will help out with the new temple) and we ate lunch at their house. They are the Lee Family. It was the first time I have been in an almost American house. It was so chic! We are so spoiled! 

-Sister Bakker and I had the wonderful idea to have a meeting with just the Sisters of Oeiras. We were so excited and coming up with wonderful ideas and we believed it was an inspiration. So we called the Zone leaders to ask permission and they said no.....well, it was an inspiration and we cannot deny inspiration, so after a very heated round of rock, paper, scissors we decided to go straight to the big dogs and call PRESIDENT TAVARES. Haha I won rock paper scissors so Sister Bakker had to call. The pressure was so high. But we called him and he thought it was a totally good idea! He gave us permission and wished us luck! Wheeeee! So today our day will pretty much be making custom made by us TSHIRTS for our sisters. Yeah, we are fun STLs. =P

-So across the street from our apartment there is a cool bakery that always smells amazing of bread. We always wave to the baker man every night when we enter our house. He likes us. So this week we have been chatting with him every night and lo and behold HE GAVE US FREE BREAD! It is amazing! and sooo good and fresh! Haha we totally have the sweetest hookup! The sisters of this area will love us forever!

I love you all and I know this church is true! Beautiful things are happening everyday, we just have to open our eyes!

Sister Barron

PS. I want you all to know that I HAVE NOT OPENED MY CHRISTMAS PRESENTS YET!!!! This is quite a huge accomplishment for me cause I LOVE PRESENTS!!! WEEEeeee!!!

WEEK 43: A Week of Firsts!

 After I cut Sister Bakkers hair, she sent a lock of it in a letter to her family. I thought it was cute. (I didn't even know I could cut other peoples hair but it turned out good!) 

We bought a little Christmas tree at the Chinese store! It was TOTALLY worth it! I already put my presents underneath it! Ahhhh anticipation!!!!

 For Thanksgiving we made a PUMPKIN PIE!!! and it was dang good! We MIGHT have eaten the whole thing in 24 hours......I didn't even know I liked pumpkin pie!!!

We were pretty psyched. Apparently pumpkin pie is Sister Bakkers favorite. =P

This was the weird looking pumpkin after we baked it.

Letter Home:

This week was so fun and awesome. Sister Bakker is absolutely hilarious and so much fun. We crack up together everyday. I love it so much. She truly is a happy missionary. I love it! :)

My comp trusted me enough to let me cut her hair this week. I think it turned out good!  I have been cutting my own hair for years but this was the FIRST time that I cut someone else’s hair! Lol I neglected to tell her that until after I had finished. =) She may or may not have been a little shocked..... haha

We were in a lesson yesterday and in the middle of teaching I saw a louse on Sister Bakkers head! It was just hanging out literally on the top of her head. Well, there was no WAY that I was going to let this happen, so I invited our investigator to read a scripture and I SNATCHED the louse right in the middle of the lesson. Sister Bakker looked at me like I was crazy, and then it dawned on her and she just said, "...lice?" and I nodded my head. Well, after that it was realllyyyy hard to concentrate on testifying with the spirit and whatnot. But we finished the lesson and the investigator and the member were none the wiser. At the end of the day we did a THOROUGH check on both of our heads and neither of us had anything. I think she might have gotten it in that moment and I just happened to snatch it. MIRACLES ARE REAL! There is no wayyyyy I am getting lice on my mission! I have heard too many horror stories! Ummm no way. Nonetheless, we will have our hair in tight buns and braids for the next few weeks. Not worth the risk. It’s hard because in Portugal people greet each other by kissing each other’s cheeks, a perfect opportunity for the little buggers to jump from head to head. Ahhhh sorry Portugal, but beijinhos are risky!

We have some amazing investigators here. We are teaching this really cute girl named Liana, or Lili:) She is so cute and absolutely loves coming to church and participating in all the activities. She is 15, but she is like an African Amazon woman and looks like she is 18. =) She is almost as tall as me. This was a new change here: Africans are really tall! I feel almost normal here! Lili wants so badly to be baptized but in this moment her Mom isn’t letting her. But we can visit whenever we want and she has no problems with us so that is good:)

I haven’t really started my Sister Training Leader duties yet. Basically all that changed is that we planned divisions and have more conference calls. Haha wheee!!!!.......

 I absolutely loveee this area! It is so different than any of my past areas. I feel like I am in Brazil or Africa. Basically our whole ward are Brazilians and Capo Verdeans. It is so fun. There are a bunch of youth here and they are all pumped about sharing the gospel and going on missions. It is so fun to get to know them and hear about their plans for the future. I can say with all my heart that my mission in the funnest and craziest things I have ever done. I love it so much. I can’t imagine what it is like to live like a normal person now. What do you all do all day? Haha 

I love you all! 

Sister Barron

PS. Shout out to my Bae Alyssa!!!! Your email BLEW ME AWAY!!!

WEEK 42- SURPRISES!

 We got to go to the BEACH! Good thing too, because who knew that we would both be transferred and this was our last P-day in Portimao.

 Beach Babe! Haha, but I can't swim.

 My cute Companion!

 When we took this picture we didn't know that we would soon be leaving each other. =(

 The Elders in our district.

 This is all in our area.

 Haha! I tried to snag a picture of Sister Olsen and the speedo man....maybe you shouldn't post this one Mommy. ( Lol! Posted it.)

 With the beach air, my nails have grown tremendously.

 For her family.

 Our awesome district! Elder Empey had the longest arm, so he took the picture.

 She was on cloud nine!

Sad to see this time together come to an end. 

I love her.

 This is Ricardo. He is learning about the church. In this picture, he is drawing a picture in my diary.

 My cute comp.

 We were knocking doors one day and no one answered at this door. But they had this chalk board outside the door, so I drew on it. It says, "God loves you!" and our number. Hopefully they call! =D

 We contacted this old fisherman on a bridge one night and he didn't want anything to do with our message, but he thought that we were so nice that he gave us a HUGE sack of fish! The new Sisters in our house will wonder why there is so much fish in the freezer. (Sister Neves was transferred to Portimao! So we all know she can cook the fish!)

 This is Fernando Bailot, he was our ward mission leader. He was INCREDIBLE!!! He brought this huge cake for our correlation meeting. He was the one that took our bunches of bags to the bus stop this morning. He is an awesome forever friend! 

He always had our back.

 My new planner! "Son of the most high!" 

I drew it! Christmas is coming!

 This is Nuno. He would go teaching with us every now and then.

 A picture from my normal spot....the piano bench!

 Brother Bailot again and my dear friend Paula. She was so sweet and invited us over once. She is a special soul and I love her a lot.

 CARINA!!!! She is amazing! She would drive us around and teach people with us! She would drop everything to help us out. I totally love her. She found the church a few years ago, and now she is married to a returned missionary in the temple! Her life totally changed, jumped tracks! 

She is so amazing!

 This is Samuel, the son of Sonia. He is super cool! Future missionary!

 This is Irma, I talk about her in my letter below. Bless her heart Heavenly Father.

The last supper! Eating dinner in President Almeidas house! We basically demanded to eat with them on our last day in Portimao. It was fun knowing that we would be leaving so we could take pictures with the members and say goodbye to the beautiful people of Portimao.

Letter Home:

I WAS TRANSFERRED! I am now in Mem Martins, an area close to Lisbon. I was called to be a Sister Training Leader, which means that I will be going on divisions with other Sisters and teaching and helping them! I am sooo PUMPED to help and meet all the sisters! AND go to Mission Counsel! Wheee this will be an adventure! It was really hard to say goodbye to Sister Olsen. She is super special. She is totally a soldier. <3 We enjoyed this time as companions.

We heard from someone that this week the son of one of our members here, Irma Mira, had died of cancer. It had been really hard for her and the family. So me and Sister Olsen decided to go to the funeral. It was my first time going to a Catholic funeral. It was sad how everyone was crying so much. I just wanted to stand on the pew and declare that THEY WILL SEE HIM AGAIN! We had decided right before the funeral to buy a few flowers. We bought a yellow and white rose. We wrote a nice note. After the Padre had read from the Bible and everyone recited their prayers together, the congregation would follow the car carrying the casket for the cemetery. When Sister Mira was getting in the car, I felt a huge prompting to give her our flowers. There was kinda a huge group of people, but I wormed my way through and gave her our small offering. They looked pretty pitiful next to the hugeee bouquets of flowers other people had given. But Mira accepted them like they were the most beautiful of them all. It was a short walk. We felt a little strange, being missionaries from another church, but the whole thing felt like a good statement. I saw a lottt of people looking at our nametags and reading what they said. We will support and love people no matter what faith they have. And in this moment, Sister Mira needed support so we were there. Eventually we arrived at the cemetery, at the grave. When they were unloading the casket, Irma Mira insisted to put OUR flowers directly on his casket. Ours were the only flowers that went down with him into the earth. It was a symbolic move on her part. WE KNOW we will be with our families forever. This is something that I know. We were sealed in the temple. That means that we are linked together through time and all eternity. After the casket was buried, we stood there and sang some hymns with Mira, just us three singing. Other people looked on. It was really sad. And really beautiful. I will never forget it.

I love you all! There is so much more I want to say, but my Mommy wanted pictures so I had to deliver:)

Until the next adventure!

Sister Barron 

This is my new companion!!!  Sister Bakker!!!