Amadora -Week 3

This week was really good. Edna came to church and a member even offered her a ride to work so she could stay longer than just the first hour. We did find out though that she isn't married, and never wanted to be, but she still has the strong desire to be baptized.

The daughter of a family in our ward was baptized and they invited so many people and many non members and less active members came which was great because they loved it! One even came to church the next day and I have never seen so much talking from non-members in the gospel principles class than from this woman. Her questions were all very sincere and she loved the class and invited us to visit her this week.

Working with the members here is going a lot better. We have been making visits to the members bringing no-bake cookies and asking for opinions on different activities that we can do. We have recieved so many ideas and the members are all very excited. We are going to start piano classes every week and think that most people are excited for that haha.

The members are getting better at bringing their friends to church. Yesterday we had a member that brought his friend and he really loved the hymns that we sang in sacrement meeting.

We had world wide training from the missonary department this week and it was very uplifting. All the missionaries in the whole world attended via satelite broadcast and it was live.

I hope you all are doing well! I love you all.
Love, Sister Jarnagin
Pics:
Lots and lots of rain
Brazilian desserts we made for the baptism
(Brigadeiros)
Missionary brodcast :)

Amadora - Week 2

This week I got a little bit of a better feel for the area and it's a lot easier to get around now too that we have our train and bus pass. We have been getting to know our members better which has been really good.

So Edna wasn't able to be baptized this week because of her schedule. Of course when we mark it for her day off her boss decides to move her whole schedule for this whole week. So we didnt get any opportunities to teach her. :(

One of the families in the ward, their daughter is getting baptized so they asked us to teach her.  It's interesting to see how simple the gosple truly is that an 8 year old can understand things like the restoration, plan of salvation, and word of wisdom. All of our investigators are currently and actively reading the Book of Mormon which is exciting!!

Well that pretty much is it. Something funny that happened this week was that we were coming back from an appointment and sister Souza stops to talk to this older guy wearing one of those russian fur hats and they start talking about his hat haha and her puts it on her head to see how warm it is. Yep... we don't have lice or anything yet but I'm on the lookout. :)
I love you all!
Love, Sister Jarnagin

Pictures:
Stairs of exaltation
Bad picture of our area from the baby mountain
Portugals air force
Our members :)

Amadora - Week 1

Well it´s a lot different here from Barreiro, but I am already loving Amadora.

I´ll start with the details. Our area is made up of 3 areas:  Part of Amadora, Que Luz, and Monte Abraão which is literally a mountain haha. I have found I am not quite as in shape as I should be climbing all the big hills here. I am in a ward that is quite big of about 80-100 active members. We also have 2 sets of elders here so 6 of us all together in the ward.
This week it rained every day and didn't stop. It rains the most here I think.

Our apartment is small but super clean and doesn't have mold like Barreiro, and it also comes with a view of 10  fat cats that sit outside in the sun on the roof. We count them every day to see if there are more.

Sister de Souza is wonderful! She is a very powerful missionary for only being in her second transfer. She is from Uberlandia, Brazil and grew up in the church. She is also learning english and is very dedicated and so we have english practice sometimes in the street and I teach her hymns in english. She says a lot of words from Brazil, so sometimes I don't always understand haha but we are getting there.

Neither of us really know our area which is huge, so we have gotten lost quite a few times, said a prayer to help, and ended up finding new investigators. One was a Brazilian named Kika. She cut the elders' hair on p-day in Brazil and read the whole Book of Mormom just out of curiosity. We taught her and she is super cool. We have been having a lot of success just in our first week.

I am learning alot from Sister de Souza. She contacts people with vigor and they listen. We found a cool guy named Daniel who we taught, and he came to church and prayed about the Book of Mormon and accepted the invitation to be baptized. Also we marked a woman, Edna for Baptism for this Friday. She came to church yesterday too and loved it! It was interesting because when we did the baptismal invitation she said she had already been baptised, but understood clearly why she needed to be baptized again. When we teach by the spirit and focus on the people we are teaching, they truly are touched and understand.

Well I love you all! Until next week!
Sister Jarnagin

Barriero - Week 24 (and transfers)

Well it was my last week in Barreiro... My reign as queen came to an end. Our mission president actually changed our transfer day to Tuesday so I will be leaving tommorow for Amadora which is in Lisbon. I  will be finishing the training of a brazilian sister, Sister Sousa. I´m really excited!

I love love LOVE Barreiro and I know it will be hard to leave. We were at Conceição´s house yesterday and I told her and she got so sad. Some friends walked in to visit her and were almost bashing on the church and she snapped right back at them and told them how good the church is and they need to go to it! I was so proud. 92 and still has fire :)

I can´t remember what we did this week because I left my note at home, but we did have new years... and we celebrated by making guesses of what would happen on transfers. Our mission president gave us permission to stay up inside our house until midnight... but sadly I didnt make it. I turned over in bed to my companion yelling "Happy new year!" at midnight and that's the new years party we had :)

Sister Stegeman and I had this great idea for a new family home evening that we did on Friday. We set up the christmas tree my mom sent in the chapel with the lights on it and put yellow apples on it. Then we strung another string of lights from the tree to the door. We made a huge maze. We started in the scriptures reading about Lehi´s vision of the Tree of Life. We blind folded all of the members and likened our lights to the iron rod, and they had to go through the maze, find the rod, and then follow it to the tree to eat the fruit. They all loved it. Not to mention we threw a couple soccer balls at their legs to cause confusion. They still loved it :)

I had to say goodby to all the members yesterday and it was so sad. I have learned so much here. I am so grateful for the opportunity to meet so many new people and to share the gospel in different parts of Portugal. I think the biggest thing I have learned this transfer and here in Barreiro is to just completely trust in the Lord. I know that His plan is completely perfect. He does everything in his timing and we do absolutely everything we can and he will carry us and do the rest.

I hope all of you had a wonderful new year and you made goals for this new year. The adversary is working harder than ever. That means our goals have to be stronger than ever and we have to exercise our faith more than ever before! I love you all!
Com amor,
Sister Jarnagin
p.s. Sorry there are no pictures this week... the computor that im am using wont let me send them :(

Barreiro - Week 23

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

A member of the sisters' branch invited us and the sisters over for dinner on the 24th so we ate with them. Bacalhau with natas. We had a fun little Christmas eve program in our house and I was the wise man haha and we all shared a talent and a Christmas tradition that we did with our families.

On the 25th we had lunch with Irma Bia who fed all 8 missionaries. More bacalhau haha. She was so happy to have all of the missionaries over to eat and we even sang with her and she danced with her dog.

We had dinner with one of our members who also fed all the missionaries. I bet you guessed... BACALHUA! haha

Christmas was so good and we were able to talk to so many people about the birth of Christ and they were all so happy :). And of course SKYPE with my family was the best Christmas present :) I just feel so very blessed especially at this time of year. We are continuing to find new pesquisadors. We found this man José that seems to have potential and he invited us and the elders for dinner and we were able to teach him. I hope you alll have a fantastic New Year!
Com amor,
Sister Jarnagin

Barreiro - Week 22

Olá gente!
Last week we had our mission Christmas party which was wonderful! The assistents and President and his wife spoke and they all had wonderful talks about Christmas and missionary work.

One of the assistents played "Christmas Shoes" at one point of his talk and related it to when judgement comes, we will all be that little boy that doesn't have enough money to purchase his christmas shoes. In our case get in to the celestial kingdom. Just like the man stepped in to pay for what the little boy couldn't pay for, the Savior will do the same for us. He has paid the price for us for what we can't give.

We also did a white elephant in between the sisters and the elders. I got a mini lightsaber (picture included) and so did one of the sisters that was in my district last transfer :). We also had a talent show kind of... well each zone was in charge of doing something. The elders in our zone didn't want to do anything so the 4 sisters in our house played "Do you want to build a snowman" on our ukueles. Yes... I now have a new talent haha. My Ukuele is purple and it´s awesome. We saw a lot of our mission friends and a selfie with President Tavares is included :)

Christmas in Portugal is different from the US, but because I am on the misssion it has litterally changed my perspective. We are just able to serve people every minute of every day and tell them about the birth of Christ and what a joy that is to our lives! Its a different experience being away from family and friends when that's where all the memories are, but it is a very special experience to share the message that Christ was born so that families can be together forever.

Our branch had the primary program yesterday in sacrement, and sister Stegeman and I sang one of the songs with them. Our branch is so excited for Christmas and we have been working hard to share a Christmas message with all of the memebers. We have quite a few members that invited us for Christmas and we are so grateful for the love they show to us.

Well I think that is all! I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and remember the real reason that we celebrate, and that you share This gift with someone else :) Don´t be afraid to share the happiness of Christ´s birth!
Com amor,
Sister Jarnagin

https://youtu.be/tuRP5_CR6BY

Barreiro - Week 20

This week... I can´t believe the first week of December already passed. It has been really foggy here lately. I woke up and almost thought it was snow. It was so white and I got really excited, but it was just thick fog haha. We had a wonderful zone meeting this past week and they introduced the new Christmas message from the church and they gave us new pass along cards. They also created a new activity for us to do called "White Christmas" and getting our friend dressed in white this Christmas.

This week we also got a chance to watch the ceremony of the first stone of the temple placed, and it was so wonderful! All the members that were with us were very excited to watch and see their long awaited dreams coming true.

This week was a little bit tough, but we are doing our best. Our mission president gave us a lot of counsel about eliminating all distractions even if they are little. So we are being very conscious about what we think about and what we do.

This week we did some new finding activities by wrapping up books of mormon and writing in the front with a picture of our family and a couple of our favorite scriptures. Sister stegeman and I both did one and we gave it to a person when we felt the spirit.  Both of the people we picked were happy to get the present :)

Well I love you all!
Love Sister Jarnagin