P-days in the mission home are awfully nice

Olá família! I'm still alive and recovering quite nicely from the

cachupa monster I ate last week (although, I think Dad's nickname of

"chupacabra soup" is a much more fitting name for cachupa), and I'm

also recovering from our "mystery meat casserole" we ate at a member's

house on Thursday (we couldn't find the name of the animal in our

dictionary... but I'm not exactly sure I want to know). I just can't

win when it comes to food at members' houses... all week, the only

thing I've wanted to eat is patties and spuds and green beans. As much

as I hated that meal when I was little, it's all I wanted this week.

Every Sunday we have our lunch at the house of Família Santos. I trust

their food. Their food is always really nice. They've adopted us. They

are our parents of Miratejo. Their kids are both living in the United

States so they just adopt the missionaries here in this area. I really

like them. One thing I've learned is that you know Portuguese people

like you if they pull out all their photo albums for you. We got to

see all their pictures from way back when. Maria Santos was one of the

first 100 members baptized here in Portugal and she was baptized in

1976, so they told us all about their conversion stories and about

meeting all the different apostles that have ever come to Portugal. It

was pretty cool.

This week not a ton happened. I got sick twice, we broke up with more

eternal investigators, investigators broke up with us... normal stuff.

Oh, daddy, I got proposed to again. I get proposed to a lot but this

time the guy said, "I'm serious. I will wait for you. I will go to the

United States and I will get your father's permission and I will wait

for you." We met him in the grocery store. Sister Mills got a pretty

strong craving for bread so we went and bought some bread. This guy

was in the check-out line behind us and he started talking to us.

Afterwards we gave him a pass-along card and invited him to church.

Then, he looked at me and said, "What would I have to do to marry a

member of your church?" Sister Mills told him he had to go to church

and then he told me that he wanted to marry me. It's a pretty common

occurrence so I didn't think anything of it. Turns out he's serious...

yeah, I don't think so. Not gonna happen.

Today we went to the mission home for interviews with President

Fluckiger. We had lunch with President and Sister Fluckiger and a

couple office elders. It was pretty fun. There's a member that works

in the mission home so I helped her make lunch and she spent a good

amount of time joking about how it was just amazing to her that I

didn't know how to make any Portuguese food. She told me that I needed

to at least learn how to make a salad so she taught me how to make a

salad like a Portuguesa... I can now succeed at anything in life. I

had a really nice interview with President Fluckiger. I sure do love

the Fluckigers. They're awfully nice. It was a really nice, really

calm p-day.

Really, this was a very calm week. Not much happened. The biggest

thing was an argument I had with our district leader. None of the

missionaries knew where the boundaries of our areas were but he was

just being really mean and doing some things that aren't right... so I

didn't start the fight, but I definitely finished it. I shouldn't have

argued with him because it wasn't the right thing to do, but I don't

believe we'll be having any more problems with the boundaries this

transfer.

I'm not perfect. I've still got an awfully long way to go and there

are so many things that I need to improve on, but I'm just grateful

every day for the opportunity to be a missionary. It still just blows

me away when I put on my nametag every morning, but every body is a

missionary: "Every member is a missionary!"

Little Sister Smith