New Sacrament Record

Boa tarde!

Hope you all are doing well. I don't know why, but my memory of the past week has almost completely gone down the drain. I know I promised, but unfortunately this one might be a shorter one again.

We had a few good lessons with friends, and did a lot of finding. There's lots of cool people here in Chaves. We also did a division in Vila Real, which was really fun.

Zone conference was on Friday, which was pretty good. Got to see a few other missionaries I haven't seen in a while, so that was fun. Afterward, we had interviews, and those went a bit late, so we would be getting home late. So Sister Barcellos brought us all to McDonald's to eat, which was really awesome. She's my favorite person. 

Sunday was a lot more successful than we thought it would be. We invited a friend, and she ended up bringing 2 other friends, which was great. They ended up really liking it. And then more members came than we thought would too. So we had a total of 14 people at church, which is a lot more than I have ever seen here. So that was awesome. 

Pday today was the same as always. A few weeks ago, I dropped of a disposable camera at a photo lab that I was testing out. Finally got the pictures back. They didn't turn out as well as I wanted, but I'll put a few of the better ones on here.

Spiritual thought:

I was writing my talk for church this week, and thought of an article I saw a while back inspired by a lecture given by Stephen Hawking. I'll copy it here:

From the outside you cannot see what is inside a black hole. You can throw televisions, diamond rings or even your worst enemies into a black hole, and all the black hole will remember is its total mass, angular momentum and electric charge. Quantum mechanics implies that the entire space is full of pairs of virtual particles and antiparticles that are constantly materializing in pairs, and then rejoining each other and annihilating each other. A member of a pair of particles can fall into the hole, leaving the other member without a partner with which to annihilate. The abandoned particle or antiparticle can fall into the black hole after its partner, but it can also escape to infinity, where it appears as radiation emitted by the black hole. The message of this lecture is that black holes are not as black as they paint them. It is not the eternal prisons that they were thought. Things can come out of a black hole. So if you feel like you're in a black hole, don't give up. There is a way out. 

It's a bit complicated, but it made me think of how with the Atonement of Jesus Christ, there is absolutely nothing that we can't get out of. Not even if we are even in a figurative black hole. 

Hope you all have a great week!

Elder Howard 

Pictures: