Howard, Keaton

Olá everyone! This last week was a fun one. We were able to find a few new people to teach, so that's awesome. A family in our branch had us over for Thanksgiving, and it was the best thing I've eaten in months. We also watched the Brasil vs Serbia game. So that was super fun. I was also asked to give a talk in sacrament meeting this Sunday, but I only had two days notice to write it. So lots of my free time over weekend was spent writing it.  Good thing I was stuck in a consulate (again) for hours, with nothing else to do but write. My companion was originally called to serve in Angola, but he was having tons of visa problems, so he was reassigned here in Portugal. He's been here for about a year trying to get his visa stuff figured out. So this last Friday, we drove to the Angolan consulate to pick up his visa, which has been ready since August. But no one told him it was ready until last week. So when we got there, waited for hours, and finally got our number called, oy ...

Oi todos! This week was wa good one! Our friend, Ernesto, was put on date for baptism, which is awesome! He has been improving really well and is looking forward to it.  This week in Caldas, Christmas season is in full swing. A few weeks ago, I mentioned that they were putting lights up on every street in town. Just this lats Saturday, they finally lit everything up. In the main town square, they have this giant Christmas tree that is maybe 60-70 feet tall. To celebrate, they brought in a live band, a ton of churro stands, food, and lots of other stuff. It was really cool! I think nearly all of the people in Caldas were there. Today for p-day, we went to this giant garden/park near us. When we walked in, it was like we were teleported straight to Thailand. There were tons of different sculptures of Buddhas, monkeys, elephants, big bamboo forests, palm trees, koi ponds and any other animal or plant you could find in southeast Asia. The whole park was maybe 4 sq. miles, so there was ...

Hey everyone ! Nothing too crazy happened this last week, so apologies for the super short email. Lots of the good ol' missionary work. Lots of finding on the streets, phone calls, and we taught a lot of lessons. One of our friends, Ernesto, is progressing well. He is from Guinea-Bissau, and he's really cool. It'll be fun to see where he goes! We have another friend from Guinea-Bissau as well, named Baluaberto, and he is also really receptive and interested in the gospel, so I'll have to start giving updates on them. Today for p-day, we walked around Caldas. We ate at this little cafe, and they have these things that are basically glorified hot pockets, and about 4 times the size. They were super good. Caldas also has a farmers market thing going on, so we got to walk around and see lots of the stuff people had to sell. There's also a tiny "freak alley" where there are huge murals and street art, so that was fun to walk around in. Tchau! Elder Howard  Pict...

Olá! I just emailed not too long ago, but I'll send another tiny update since it's p-day again. There was a lot of fun stuff that happened the last few days. Last Friday we had a branch activity, which was awesome. We didn't expect tons to show up, but the turn out couldn't have been better! We did a few activities and challenges with everyone, like the toilet paper mummy, and oreo challenges. Afterwards, we had a ton of food to eat.  I got to learn to cook some Brazilian food with some members in our branch, which was fun. Now I have feijoado and strogonoff in my arsenal of food to make. I also got to play soccer with the members and others who live here. Playing with Brazillians and the Portuguese is crazy. I feel like I'm in the middle of no man's land. I'm getting a lot better at soccer because of it, and it’s tons of fun. We also had a zone p-day with a ton of other missionaries. Lots of soccer, frisbee, and volleyball. We got a ton of pizza too.  Tchau...

Olá todos! This last week and a half was pretty fun, but it felt really long. Today, we had the chance to drive down to Lisbon to go to the temple. We decided to move our p-day to today so that we could go walk around the city after our temple session. We had to take the subway system to get to a certain part of the city, which was really fun. We went and got something to eat, and then we walked around a bit. There were a bunch of cool monuments/buildings to see. Lots of awesome things in Lisbon! Halloween here is definitely different than in the states. Theres a good chunk of stores in downtown Caldas that have decorations, but not much other than that. The town has started preparing for Christmas already. For the past few days, they have been putting up a ton of lights above all the streets and buildings. They're not done yet, but when they are all lit up, I'll send a picture. There are also people with little carts that roast castanhas, which are just chestnuts, and we decid...