Potato Boy

Olá todos, tudo jóia?


Sorry for another long wait. I've decided if I have a temple pday, I'll just space those two emails out by a week and a half so that I don't have to write two within days of each other. 


Anyway, the last week and a half were awesome! Last week, we were able to go get lunch with our branch president's friend, John, and he is probably one of my favorite people I've met on the mission so far. Maybe I mentioned him in a past email, but he is this old catholic British guy who loves to bring the missionaries out to eat every transfer. He has one of the strongest accents I've heard, so every joke he tells us is even funnier. He's given me the name "Potato Boy" since I'm from Idaho. This time for lunch, he brought us to a place called Fogo do Chão, which is basically Tucanos but smaller. It was super good. We convinced him to let us take a picture with him too which is cool cause he hates photos, haha.


Last week we also put some of our friends, the mother and son I mentioned, on a date for baptism! They are absolutely awesome, and get along with all the members at church. It's been a blast to be able to teach them. It has also been fun to continue to meet with Benvinda, our recent baptism, to continue teaching stuff too. She loves learning as much as she can, so it's something we always look forward to doing every week. This last time we met with her, we were at a park, and a drunk guy came up to us and started talking about religion, and other stuff like how since he's an alcoholic, there's no hope for him in the afterlife since he messed up too much here. Benvinda went full missionary mode and was able to help him realize that wasn't true. She's awesome. Sometimes we learn from her.


For pday last week, we decided to go to a town called Sintra, which is west of Lisbon. It's a pretty calm little town, except for all the tourists. It's definitely what you think of when you think of an old European town. There's an old Moorish castle and a huge palace on top of a mountain there, so we went to go see them. We weren't able to take the tour of the palace though, but we did go hike around the forest/garden that surrounds the castle and palace. There were a ton of cool things to find there. For today's pday, we got together as a zone and met at a park underneath one of the huge bridges here. We played a ton of ultimate frisbee, capture the flag, and some good old zombie tag. I don't think I’ve run that hard or that much in a while, but it was awesome. 


Scripture of the week: Alma 34:9-10
For it is expedient that an atonement should be made; for according to the great plan of the Eternal God there must be an atonement made, or else all mankind must unavoidably perish; yea, all are hardened; yea, all are fallen and are lost, and must perish except it be through the atonement which it is expedient should be made. 10 For it is expedient that there should be a great and last sacrifice; yea, not a sacrifice of man, neither of beast, neither of any manner of fowl; for it shall not be a human sacrifice; but it must be an infinite and eternal sacrifice.


This is one of the scriptures we shared with the drunk guy to help him. He really liked it. He walked off later, and we might not ever see him again, but hopefully, we were able to help him a little bit, and maybe he'll change because of that and through the Atonement. I know that we all can change and better ourselves through it as well.


Boa semana everyone!


Elder Howard 


Pictures: 
- Zone pday 
- Palace and the forest
- Lunch with John
- Temple after zone conference





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