Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes

Hello dearest family! It was great to hear from you and to get news from home. Thank you so much for all of your support and love and prayers. I really appreciate it.

Well, this has been a week of challenges, but we have learned and grown a lot from them. All of the appointments we set up last week fell through, which was hard, but we were able to have other opportunities that we would not otherwise have had. We got to teach Soraya, whom I might have mentioned last week, but she is great and we hope that she will be able to get Sundays off of work to be able to come to church with us.

Lucy is still doing well and progressing at a good pace. She is keeping her committments and is no longer smoking! She is also speaking in English more with her kids and they are learning so much! I am amazed at how well they understand us when we speak to them. I think they will start responding in English soon.

Tania is doing well and is so amazing. She is on medication that makes her very very tired, but she still gets up every Sunday morning to go to church. I am very impressed by her.

Yesterday was a really good day for us here. We had a lesson with Felizmina and hopefully she will come to church on Sunday. We are trying to get her more excited about the gospel, because she already knows that the Church is true, she just needs to act on it. Later that day we went and got ice cream with a member in the 2nd ward, Encarnação, who needed to talk and her husband won't let us come over. So that was good that she wanted to talk with us. She seems to be doing a lot better. Then we got a member involved in the work!! Antonio went out with us to make contacts and contact some less actives in the ward. He is amazing with contacting and we seemed to run into only Angolans, which was great because Antonio is Angolan. That really helped.

Then I got to teach English class! I taught the body and made Elder Kapp draw a missionary and we labeled him. Then after I taught them all of the words, I let the elders teach "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes,0" which ended up being a bit hit with everyone, especially with the kids who were there. I really enjoy teaching the classes and I have a lot of energy to do it, so I think everyone benefits.

We are planning a big musical fireside for the 20 July. We are getting our whole zone involved and inviting the whole stake. It's going to be great and the elders of the zone are all really excited to participate.

Oh, I have the phone from Lagos, which I think John had. Crazy. The family connections continue even in Olivais.

Well, that's about it from here. While things are challenging here all I can do is have the faith that the work will progress here and the ward will help us with the work. I love you all and hope that you have a great week!