This week was a good week..it seems long at times, but now I can´t believe it´s already pday!

We had Zone Conference this week (which I always love!) and it was really good. Our mission president talked about Sanctification, and being honorable missionaries vs sanctified missionaries...it was interesting, and I need to study it more, but eventually I´ll share my thoughts (and His!) with you all...

On Saturday, it was a day of service with Helping Hands ? I think. But anyways, we got to leave the house early in the morning (and we wore jeans..yay!!) and we headed off to do service. We didn´t know beforehand, but our service ended up being cleaning up a beach. So we got to the to the beach! It was a rainy, windy morning, but still the beach was so beautiful! It was the first time I´ve gotten to go to the beach in Portugal, and it was amazing, even with bad weather. The service was pretty fun too, just picking up trash from the beach.

Yesterday we had a baptism of a young woman- Bela. She is amazing- she was excited for her baptism, but also sad because none of her family came to the baptism to support her. Fortunately, the members of the ward here are amazing, and really helped her. In the talk of a member during the baptismal service, she talked about the lack of Bela´s family, and how she had already told Bela that the ward would be a new family for her. It was really touching, and I am so thankful that we are all part of the Family of our Heavenly Father, and that also we can join the family of Christ through baptism. We have the opportunity and responsibility to help and nurture one another, as we covenant to do in baptism.

This week my companion is going home, in the middle of transfers. We still haven´t heard definitively whats going to happen, but for now we think that a mini-missionary will come to Almada. A mini-missionary is a member that doesn´t receive a calling to serve as a missionary, but they live and work as a missionary for a set amount of time. In this case, she would be a mini-missionary for 3 weeks until the next transfer...but we´ll see! Life is never dull here :D