Six Months and Kittens!

Hello dearest family! Thank you all for the updates. It sounds like it was a really good week for everyone, myself included.

Well, today is my six month mark. Can you all believe it? It seems like I've been a missionary forever, but in Portugal for about two months. It's starting to fly by. Irmã Ives and I are trying to figure out what we can do to celebrate.

Well, we'll start with the bad news. President Terry called us Friday before we started our weekly planning to tell us that he will be taking the sisters out of Olivais permanantly. We were really sad to hear this, but we had kind of known the whole transfer that two sister areas would close and Olivais was one that would probably close. President has had a lot of problems with the ward here, but I hope that things will get better and that the ward will be stronger sometime in the future. I won't know where I'm going until next Tuesday, unless the APs let something slip, but I highly doubt it. So I'll let you know next week.

So our kitchen faucet fell off last p-day, so our dono and our dona came up to fix it. It was a show! They were doing a lot of banging and shoving of things and there was a lot of grunting and muttering. They were talking to themselves in the "tu" form. It was hilarious!

Irma Ives' ear has been infected this past week as well, so I have had the lovely pleasure of putting goopy drops in her ear four times a day. The joys of a companionship. You will all be relieved to know that the swelling has gone down and the redness has decreased. Phew! We're hoping it clears up before her family comes next week, or they will have that lovely pleasureof the pussy eardrops.

If you were wondering what the "I can't, I have to wash my hair" excuse of Portugal is, well you can stop wondering because it is "I can't, I have to take my dog to the vet." We had a lesson set up with Pedro with our Bishop and we were excited for the two of them to meet, because it is realy hard to get the Bishop out and Pedro works a lot. So we had it set up and then Pedro texted us to tell us that he had to take his dog to the vet, at night, on a Friday night. I don't know about you, but I think that if the grocery stores close early at night, then the vet probably does too. Wow. Irma Ives and I had a good chuckle over that one.

Oh! We have stray cats that get fed by our dona downstairs that like to wander into our house. We were repulsed by them, but guess what! They had kittens!! This is probably the closest to a pet I can have, they are still TERRIFIED of us, but they are sooooo cute and fluffy and they dont come into our house, so even better! They have no traction and slide around on the tile on the veranda. So cute!

We also live a few doors down from a snail factory. That's right. A snail factory. Sometimes, when the wind is just right and it's hot enough (and believe me, it's usually hot enough) then the apartment kind of has a snaily smell. I think only in Portugal would this ever happen. I think it's charming, though a gross smell.

This week we had a wonderful experience. We were meeting up with Nelo, a member, to go to contacts or knocking. We were waiting for him in the metro station (how we usually travel here) and we got "O Eldered" by this guy standing on the side. By the look of him I thought he was just going to bug us, but he actually turned out to be an inactive member. He, Sandro, was SUPER nice and SUPER normal. He invited us to come back to his house and talk to his dad, who is a less-active member. So he was nice enough to wait around for Nelo and we all went down there. He was really open and talked really well about the Church. So Sandro took us to his dad, Mario, and Mario was really open and nice too and had only left the Church because people weren't super friendly, which I can believe. So we gave him appropriate faca and love and they are both going to come to church on Sunday! I am so excited! The whole family was SUPER nice and respectful and awesome. I really think they will come back to full activity. Mario was a great leader in the Church before they moved and went inactive, so he would be a great help here.

We also went around with the BYU professor, Valerie Hegstrom, yesterday. We were going to teach Lucy the Law of Chastity with her (we thought we would help the elders out before we leave and go over that with her. I think they were very appreciative of that). But Lucy wasn't at her apartment and we couldn't get a hold of her. That never happens with Lucy, she loves us coming over and she always calls if she will be late. So we hope that everything is alright with her. So we ended up taking Valerie tracting with us! Fun! She had served a mission in Peru and was rather enjoying herself. She told us mission stories and talked to me about the Spanish/Portuguese department and other things. She has really been a tender mercy for me here. I have loved working with her and hope to continue our friendship at BYU. They ended up feeding us dinner and I felt like I was in the STates! Though we ate Spanish food.

Things are good here and I am doing well. I will let you know where Im going next week. I love you all and hope that you are staying strong in the gospel and doing all that the Saviour would have you do. I love you all!