Howard, Keaton

Olá! Hope you all are well. This week was a bit of a rollercoaster, but it was good. Opening an area is a bit rough and redundant at first, so that's been a bit of a challenge. We haven't really got any contacts we can spend a chunk of time calling or people that are willing to be taught, so all we have been doing is walking around all day talking to people, and knocking doors just trying to get our teaching pool. Good thing Espinho is awesome to walk around, or I'd be burnt out fast.  So that's kinda been what's going on the whole week with missionary work. We had a division with the ZLs which was fun. Added a bit of variety in our schedule that day.  Pday today was pretty fun. Espinho has a massive farmers market every Monday. So we decided it would be fun to go through there. It would've taken hours to walk through everything, but we saw a ton of really cool stuff. Any vegetable or fruit you could think of, meats, sausages, cheeses, and I got a jar of rosemar...

Olá todos! So this past week was a curveball I was not expecting in the slightest. We had a pretty normal week up until Wednesday. We receive transfer news on Wednesdays, and so we all decided to go to a really good BBQ place to open them all together. I was expecting to end the mission in Mem Martins, so I wasn't too concerned about it until I heard that I was being transferred and going to open an area. So that was a big surprise to me. I was pretty disappointed because I had just gotten used to the area, got to know the members, and we had some good friends who were progressing well. So now I am here in a little coastal town called Espinho. It is actually the coolest town that I have ever served in. Let me tell you a little bit about it. So it is a big surfing town, so there is a big surf culture here. Big beaches, long boardwalks, and a bunch of cool stuff like that. It's got pretty much everything you need, too. We have one of each of the major grocery stores, so we'll...

Olá everyone!  Hope you all are great. This week was a fun one. It started with my comp losing his transport pass. We tried finding it for a few days, but just took the L and got him another one. I made him promise to keep it in a funny lanyard so he wouldn't lose it again, so now he's walking around the train stations and metro with a Lilo and Stitch themed lanyard. Totally worth all the hassle of getting a new pass. So that was actually pretty fun.  We also made a cheesecake for my comps 100th day as a missionary. We brought it to a member meal, and it was actually really, really good. It's surprisingly easy to make. We were pretty proud of it.  It's getting really hot here now, and so we are getting a lot of flies in the house. Like an absurd amount. We have been trying super hard to try to get rid of them, but to no avail. We did find an electric fly swatter, and it turns out it works pretty well. Our house has been basically fly free for almost an hour at this poin...

Olá a todos!  Hope you all had an amazing conference weekend. It was definitely a good one for us. We were able to watch one of the sessions at a members house, and that meant that we got snacks to eat as we were watching. It was awesome. I especially liked the talk from Elder Holland about prayer. How we can have the entire world pray for someone, and it will be answered. Just maybe not in the exact way that we want, and confiding in the plan that God has. It was a funny opening too. He is awesome. We focused a bit more this week on street contacts and knocking doors. So we got to see some cool places, and meet some cool people. However, one of them was not so great. We went into this building, and were making our way down from the top knocking doors. Then we knock one, and an old lady opens up. She's using a walker and can't move very well, and we start talking to her. Then her cat decides to walk out and start nestling and rubbing up on our legs and all that stuff. I was jus...

Olá todo mundo! Hope you guys are doing well. Not a lot of time has passed since the last email, so there isn't a whole ton to write about, but there is something absolutely crazy (at least to me) that happened during the past few days.  So my comp and I decided on a hunch that we would go and proselytize in Sintra, a town next to us, which we never do. It isn't really the best for missionary work since it is 90% tourists, but we decided to give it a chance. We did some contacts, and had lunch there. Once we were done, we started walking back to the train station to go back home. As we are walking back, we hear a huge group of people start yelling "ELDERS!!!" and it totally caught us off guard. It isn't super common to run into American members here in Portugal, but it happens maybe a few times to nearly every missionary here. So I thought that was awesome, but then I hear "KEATON!!" coming from the crowd and it low key freaked me out because I've ne...