Spinal Fluid, Firefighters, And Hard Rock Café
Olá!
Holy smokes, what a crazy past few days. I'll explain the title in a bit, but first, I'll write about all the normal stuff that happened. We just kinda ran through the normal motions the whole week. We were able to have a few divisions, both with the ZL's and another companionship in our district. Both went really well and were super fun. We also marked a baptism!! He is the son of one of the members in our group. Maybe I already mentioned them in a previous email, but I'll explain again. So the father is a less active member, and his son has just turned 8. And so they both have started to come to church because the dad was interested in maybe having their son baptized. They have come consistently the entire past month, which is awesome, and they have both been studying the Book of Mormon from the beginning, too. They both really like it, especially the son. His son, Iani, is super smart and LOVES scripture stories. His idea of a good time is to watch Bible videos on TV and play scripture games on the phone. So he is awesome. He is loving the BOM a ton so far. We asked them about the baptism a few weeks ago when we had a meal with them, and they said they would talk about it together. This last Sunday, they said they had decided that Iani wanted to get baptized! So that was super cool. It's awesome too to see the father coming back to church and beginning to love the scriptures a ton again. So cool.
This is where the crazy stuff starts. After church on Sunday, we had one of the Irmãs in the group invite us over for lunch after. We got there, and she started making a Portuguese soup. I don't know what it is called, but it has macaroni, cabbage, potatoes, and pork in it with a chicken broth. It smelt and tasted really good. The only problem was, is that the cut of pork she used was the spine of the pig. So there were good bits with normal pork meat, but it was mostly vertebrae. She said to take one of them and scoop out the spinal nerves and fluids because they were good. I wasn't about to say no to an old Portuguese Irmã, so I went for it. It was not worth it. If you're squeamish, here's your warning. It was like a bunch of slimy spaghetti, and the nerves and fluids popped while I was chewing, and it was the most pungent flavor of formaldehyde. I think that took the cake for the most interesting thing I've eaten on the mission.
Today, for pday, we went down to Porto with the other elders in our district. One of them was going to the hospital there to get surgery for an ingrown toenail, so we decided it would be fun to tag along. As we were on our way to the bus station to get to Porto, the elders realized they left the keys in the apartment. We had no time to wait for a locksmith, so we decided to leave and deal with it later. We got to the hospital and waited for a bit. My comp and I decided we would leave so we could go explore. The second we stepped outside, a torrential downpour started, and I quickly got soaked. So that was a little sucky at first, but I just came to accept it. We walked around a ton, and the architecture in Porto is amazing. Lots of old cathedrals with tile mosaics on the side, towers, fountains, libraries, governmental buildings, it was all amazing. We went to a cool camera shop, which was awesome. Lots of old film cameras. We stopped by a pastry shop that sells the best pastéis de nata in Portugal. Haven't had them since I was in Lisbon last year. Super good. We also stumbled upon a Hard Rock Cafe, so we stopped in there, too. Those are always fun. We ended up running late to the station to get back to Vila Real, and we had to take the metro. We had no money or tickets on our passes, so we had to recharge them and switch our passes to the right line, or we couldn't use the right train line. Then we had a little miracle because the machine wasn't working well, but it would tell us how many credits we had. We found out that we both had not only mysteriously received a ticket credit but our cards had also switched to the right metro line. So that was a pretty crazy miracle for us, and we ended up making our bus back home.
We had left the keys in the apartment though, so we had to call the firefighters to come and unlock it. They do it cheaper than the regular locksmith, so it was an obvious choice. They pulled up, and they were super cool. Had a batman logo on their truck, which was awesome. We had to pay in cash, though, and it had to be exact. We had two 20s and a five, so we had to walk around and find some way to break a 20. We found a guy walking into an apartment and asked if he had 2 10s to trade us. He came in clutch and did have 10s, and on top of that, he was willing to trade. Super friendly guy, and so that all worked out well, and we got in and had enough time to make some fire homemade chili for dinner.
So, the past two days have been really hectic and crazy, but it was filled with so many cool experiences and miracles. It was so cool to see Heavenly Father’s hand in our lives the past few days. This definitely goes in the top 3 experiences of the mission so far. Anyway, I'm running out of time to write, so I'll leave you guys here. If you read the whole thing, parabéns! You've just read what was probably my longest email I've written. At least for a long time. Hope you all fo great!
Até a próxima!
Elder Howard
- The Bombeiros
- Porto town hall
- Cool tower
- The Livraria Lello, the bookstore that inspired the book store in Harry Potter. Didn't go in because there was a super long line, but I highly encourage you to look up pictures of the inside if you can
- One of the old cathedrals and its tile mosaic (azulejos) on the side. It was super cool, but we couldn't go inside, unfortunately. 
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