Aug. 5
Church starts at 9:30 a.m. here and isn’t too far away from our apartment. In spite of that, we were almost late because we got lost in the maze of side streets. Women greet each other in the traditional Portuguese way – touching cheek to cheek (both sides) with a little kiss sound in your ear. We arrived with enough time for me to play two minutes of prelude. A beautiful young sister from Angola (and a returned missionary) led the music. She did a great job.
As I looked
out over those sitting in the chapel, I could identify several from Ecuador,
Brazil, Angola, Portugal (of course), and others I am not sure of. Merl estimates there were between 70 and 80
in attendance. The Branch President, Rui
Gorjão, is a stately young man, with a confident presence. He has been a member
of the church for three years. He is a
pharmaceutical salesman (jokes with the missionaries that he is a drug
dealer). He conducted the meeting
today. After the sacrament, he asked
Merl and me to introduce ourselves.
Because it was Fast Sunday, I had been thinking about bearing my
testimony and had prepared some thoughts.
I am so glad I did because of how tongue tied and forgetful I get. We stood together at the pulpit as we expressed our
thoughts and our desire to serve with them.
The missionaries later told us we said exactly what we should have – and
they could understand our Portuguese, even with the American accent (sotague). As it always was in Brazil, no minute was wasted
in the bearing of testimonies.
There was a
lengthy break between meetings as several families with children spent time in
the kitchen eating before going to class.
Primary and youth groups meet in the lower level for their second and
third hour classes. There are no
pianos/keyboards to use – next week I hope to attend Primary and see how best
we can help.
The majority
of the members attended the Gospel Principles Gospel Doctrine class was taught
in the chapel attended by most of the people from Ecuador. They are beautiful natives who wear their
traditional dress, all with long black hair.
Quite striking! As we get to know
them better, I hope to get some pictures.
Most of them live in the neighboring city of Albufeira, a beach resort
town about 25 miles away. The Algarve
(the district we live in) has a big land mass with 6 branches – some members
have to travel long distances to attend meetings. Pres. Fillmore, in his plan for the mission, is
to strengthen members and increase membership close to the existing chapels and
then to spread to the outlying areas.
I was asked
to play in Relief Society, and our lesson was on personal ways of
ministering. Even on the other side of
the world, our focus is now ministering to each other. Some examples given (and I could understand
them) were listening, sharing, teaching, love, service, mourning with each
other (an investigator attending had just lost her husband and spoke of the
assistance she had from members), etc. (foto: a group of primary boys playing on their phones after church.)
We arrived
home and immediately fell asleep. I
think the heat and lack of sleep had finally caught up with us. We later fixed a late lunch experimenting
with our stove. The fish fillets, baked
in the oven, were a bit crisp; but the stir-fried vegetables (zucchini, carrots,
cauliflower) were perfect. We added a
salad and sliced melon for our first nice meal.
We like to
take walks in the evening after the sun goes down, and tonight we took another direction
and found an outdoor event center where people were gathering. We stopped to see what the attraction was and
learned that a concert of “Accordions by the Hands of Youth” was soon to begin
(nothing is soon here). It began as a “recital”
of individual or duet songs played by several students and ended with all of
them playing together with singers. We
thoroughly enjoyed the music and cultural expressions. This was a part of their history and culture
that was a blessing to participate in tonight.
It was late when we arrived home, and we slept better than usual.
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