Olá família! Esta semana foi boa. Presidente Fluckiger
nos-mandou a
estudar Páscoa antes da Conferência Geral, e para mim
Conferência
Geral foi mais poderosa do que qualquer outra altura em
minha vida.
Serio... foi incrível mesmo. Uma Cabo Verdeana de nossa ala
fez
cachupa para nos e eu tinha medo porque já ouvi tantos
histórias maus
sobre cachapa, mas ainda comi. Provavelmente a decisão mais
stupido de
minha vida.
Would you like that translated?
Hello family! This week was good. President Fluckiger had us
do a
study of Easter before General Conference, and for me
General
Conference was more powerful than any other time in my life.
Seriously... it was incredible. A woman from Cabo Verde in
our ward
made cachupa for us and I was scared because I have heard
lots of bad
stories about cachupa bt I still ate it. Probably the most
stupid
decision of my life.
General Conference was awesome. We watched the Women's
Session, the
Saturday Morning Session, and the Saturday Afternoon Session
in
Portuguese at the church. It came over satellite to the
chapel so it
was pretty nice. The Sunday Morning Session Sister Mills and
I felt
prompted to watch it in English. We didn't want to because
we're in
Portugal and we speak Portuguese, but we went downstairs
where it was
being shown in English and we watched it. Holy smokes. I
believe that
session was specifically for me. Every single talk was so
powerful and
Sister Mills and I spent a good amount of time just
bawling... the
elders were a little weirded out, but their emotional range
is much
smaller than ours so it's okay. We were not able to watch
the Sunday
Afternoon Session, but we had planned on watching it
today...
unfortunately, that's where the story of the cachupa comes
in.
Cachupa: (noun) An African soup that is made by putting
anything
edible from the kitchen into a pot and cooking it for an
undisclosed
amount of time.
I had heard stories about cachupa from returned missionaries
and from
other missionaries here in Portugal, but the member, Luisa,
has a very
strong personality. We were working all day on Sunday and
she got mad
about that because she wanted us to come over and have an
Easter lunch
with her. We went to her apartment for dinner and she gave
us cachupa.
It didn't smell very good, but my thoughts were "You
have to eat it
Sister Smith. Grit your teeth and just eat it. Don't look at
it. Say a
prayer. It will be okay." It was not okay. I ate almost an entire
tongue of an animal before I realized what I was eating.
Then I
noticed that there were lots of other animal parts in that
soup (more
tongue... eye ball... other unidentifiable parts). I ate
around the
meat and then I stooped to the whole "hide the food
when the member's
not looking" trick. Sister Mills had told me before
that the cachupa
might cause problems but I thought she was just being
obnoxious. Nope.
I have been throwing up every hour, on the hour since 1:18
this
morning. Awesome. We did not have time to watch the Sunday
Afternoon
Session, but oh well. It's a new weight loss program.
Benjamin, if you
go to Africa, Cabo Verde, or Portugal on your mission, do
everything
in your power to avoid eating cachupa. It is not worth the
price you
pay afterwards.
This week I remembered how important it is to talk to
everyone. Sister
Mills and I had used up all our plans and we still had time
to work,
so we decided we were going to talk to everyone we saw.
There was one
person that had seen us walking back and forth a couple of times
and
Sister Mills was a little nervous about it, but I decided we
would
give it a chance and just invite him to watch the
"Porque Ele Vive"
video. His name is Abilio and it turns out he was an old
investigator
from last year and he'd been going to church for three
months last
year. We invited him to come to Conferência Geral and he
said he would
come. We tried to call him to remind him the morning of
conference but
he didn't answer so we figured he probably hadn't been
serious about
coming. Then, just a few minutes after the session started
Abilio
walked into the chapel wearing Sunday clothes and then he
stayed for
the whole session. He came without any reminders or any help
and
because of the effort on his part he had a spiritual
experience in
Conferência Geral. Awesome.
I'm out of time, but I love you. You're all a wonderful
bunch of human beings.
Love,
Sister Smith
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