This week was great and long. I don't know why but these last few weeks have felt like a drag.  Honestly I have just about knocked every door here in Beja in our area in walking distance. We still have this week or next to get the rest of them finished then restart. Many of them don't answer so we need to do it again anyway. But I don't like going down the road knocking every door I see. I heard one time that an elder said, "you aren't exercising your faith if you hit ever door on every street." so I have been putting that to the test. We found some pretty solid investigators, well, potential investigators. Better than nothing. It's the best week I have had on getting more solid potentials, instead of the people that roll their eyes and say,"yeah come back another day, when you want," wink wink nod nod. That happens a lot. But it's all good. 

The weather is hotter than I would like. It is perfect in the mornings when we go out to run. But by working time comes, it is too hot. We don't have a thermometer so I couldn't tell you the temperature. 

We actually did one little thing of service this week, we got to take someone's trash out. When we ask to do that, only maybe one in a hundred accept the help. And we don't even get the opportunity to ask much anyway. :) So it's rare.

This week has been great, but tiring, as usual. We didn't get baptisms or anything, but the other elders had a baptism. We were supposed to have the interview Friday night, but he didn't show up, and we couldn't get a hold of him. Saturday, his friend called the elders and asked, "Do you want to speak with him?" So clearly they did. We met them in the church, taught the last lesson, then immediately after, had the interview. About 2 hours after that, we had his baptism. :) It was a fun, long day. We ended up spending about 4 hours in the church for that, but it was worth it. :) 

Transfers were this weekend and nearly all of us stayed here.  We have four in this house. From what Sister Jeffers told me, was, as of last Friday, we were all staying here. But last minute, President transferred Elder Darrington up north.  I will receive my companion this Thursday, Elder Sanderson (from what I know).  It's going to be three straight transfers that I have trained. Maybe this time I will do it right.

Nothing really big happened this week other than on April 1st we had a zone meeting. Before it started we all decided at 12:00 we would stand up and walk outside, no matter what we were doing, and to not say anything. Well the zone leaders put on a show for us during the announcements like they were getting pretty mad at each other, they did a great job, but it was "April Fools." We caught it easy. Anyway, so at 12:00 exactly we were supposed to separate into groups to do these practices, or the role plays, right, and exactly at that time, we all stood up and walked outside. It was the funniest thing ever. I loved it. :)  ~ April Fools ~

After the Zone Meeting the two zone leaders came to our area and we did a division. Elder Madsen came in six weeks before I did and he is from Spanish Fork. He went to Dixie for some school before the mission. He is awesome. I got the privlige to be his companion for the division. He is an amazing missionary. 

We watched all sessions of conference except the last one because we had to be home before 10:00. I was having a hard time taking notes so I didn't get to choose a favorite but a lot of them talked about families. I wonder how many missionaries got "trunky" at this conference. :) 

Thanks for everything. Everything is great here. Love you all.

Elder Lee

Our week was good. Mais ou menos. My hardest problem is finding new people to teach. And that's what we need now. I came here, finished the work they did before me, now I need to start something, but I don't know how to do it. P-days, we study in the morning until 11:30. Then afterwards we usually either clean the house or buy food for the week, eat lunch about 1:00 or 1:30, go do email, and look for things to buy around the city. We don't have much to do here in Beja. Not many stores or many attractions.

Have a great week.  Keep up all of the good work.  Love you all.

Elder Lee

Sorry I didn't have time to email much last week. I was transferred and had about an 8 hour bus ride, on 2 buses.  After one hour on the bus, I arrived in Porto, where two sister missionaries jumped on my bus, so i went back with them and we talked for that 4-hour bus ride. Those sisters saved my life that day. One of them is from Price.  Her name is Sister Nielson.

My new area is Beja, Portugal. My new companion is Elder Gregory Darrington from Idaho. His family is a huge ranching family, so we have quite a bit in common with our work before the mission. It's fun to talk about that. 

Last week was draining.... we ended up having about 20 lessons in total. We had a baptism of a woman named Fátima. She had been marked for baptism for the past 6 weeks and we did the work to get her baptized this week. It was a struggle making commitments and everything.  Now her husband should be baptized this coming week. We will see. :) Elder Darrington got to baptize her and I got to confirm her a member. It was interesting, She only had seven words in her name. :P

I am now district leader here in Beja. It is hard work. I haven't written in my journal for a long time. I took personal study today to write for the past week.

I am in the middle of nowhere. It reminds me of home actually. :) It is country land, farms and stuff. But it's more agriculture than animals and a lot of olive trees. The weather this last week was a bit cold. Being here away from the water when the sun goes down, it gets cold. But with the sun, it gets really hot. so yeah, like home. :)  I am in another branch, just about the same size or a bit smaller than my last area.  We have a senior couple here in our area. It's awesome. We bought them pastries today. P-days, we don't get any rest. I am sick of it. All I want to do is sleep for a bit. But that won't happen. 

Thanks for everything. Love you all. Until next week,

Elder Lee

I was transferred to Beja. I was in the farthest north area in the mission and now I am near the very bottom. I only traveled for 8 hours on the bus. Man it was long. My new companion is Elder Darington from Arizona. I will be finishing his training here this transfer. I am also in a four elder house again with Elder Jones, who is being trained for the last 6 weeks as well and with Elder Hansen, who was in the MTC with me. So we have two elders that have 2 transfers and 2 elders with 6 transfers. It's going to be a blast. We will see how it goes. Well I don't have a lot of time today, so I will write more next week.

Thank you. Love You All. Have a great week.

Elder Lee

We had a baptism Saturday! It was really, really, really stressful. We had planned to do the baptismal interview just an hour before the baptism. We received a call at 11 o'clock that morning that we didn't have a place to baptize. We didn't know what to do. It isn't our responsibility to get a place, but at the last minute it was. During this time we were working on the baptismal program. The other elders arrived and we went and ate out for lunch with them, and that was good. We made it back to the church at 2:00 to have the interview and to tell them that we didn't have a place. But they arrived late, but not to stress too much, the interview went quick. Olindo, the old guy getting baptized is 82 years old and we didn't have a place with warm water so we asked if he would be baptized in the river that goes directly into the ocean. He said he didn't care so we decided to do that at 4:00. So everything eventually worked out fine. We finished everything at about 6:00.  I was just so tired, and the Church was messy, so we decided to clean the church. We left the chapel at 8:00 and did a little bit of work. The next day I was more tired. Baptism is a lot of stinking work. But everything was good. The son-in-law of Olindo baptized him, who is the husband of a recent convert. So it was really cool.  And yeah, I gave a small talk on the Holy Ghost.