Feliz Natal! I can´t believe that Santa Claus is coming this week :D Are you all prepared and excited?!

This last week was a good one. On pday after writing we went to Sinta and visited Castelo dos Mouros- it was really neat and has a great view of Sintra and Mem Martins. I´ll send photos in another email :)

This week we worked a lot with Orlando to prepare him for his baptism on Sunday. Everything went well except for the fact that we didn´t have hot water. For some reason, both of the heaters for the baptismal font weren´t working. So we asked him if he wanted to postpone for another day to fix the heaters or be baptized in COLD water- he was really brave and said that he didn´t want to delay his baptism. So we went ahead and had the baptism. An elder in our ward baptised him, and oh, the look on his face when he entered the water! I hadn´t thought until than that we asked Orlando if he wanted to be baptized, but we didn´t ask the elder if he was willing to baptize in the freezing water! :) But he courageously fulfilled his duty. When Orlando came up out of the water he gave a huge gasp of shock....I thought we had killed our investigator!!! But afterwards Orlando was really happy and said it was a good experience (in spite of the cold!)

We also have another investigator that´s going to be baptized on Christmas!He´s an awesome investigator who reads, studies, goes to church, and is really serious to understand the gospel. He´s been praying and received his answer that this is what is right for him to do, which is so awesome! He´s the brother of a recent convert, and it´s been so neat to see how excited he is for his brother to be learning and accepting the gospel. Especially considering that their parents are JWs, they are really firm.

On Friday we had our ward Christmas party. The ward mission leader was also doing the decorations and asked the misionaries to help him paint a sleigh and reindeer that he made from styrafoam. We spent 5 HOURS painting the thing!! Then we had to leave the party before it came out because the party went really late. Then when we saw it the next day, and had been torn! That´s a little frustrating considering how much time we spent painting it, but, service is service. The ward party was fun- dinner and then a concert by the youth who are learning piano in the ward.

We had a lesson the other day with a recent convert about repentance that was interesting. He understands the concepts of repentance, but feels that he hasn´t felt the change of repentance, or the ´´sorrow´´ or weight of repentance. It made me think of a talk I read recently by Elder Eyring, where he talked about repentance and conversion, and how they are implicit in one another. It was interesting to talk with him about the reason of repentance- sometimes we repent or regret something just becuase of the consequences that it brought, and not necessarily that we disobeyed or displeased God. One is an external force that may change our actions, but doesn´t change our heart or desires. They other is a change that starts from the inside- our love of God and desire to obey and please him. As we feel the weight of acting contrary to this, our heart and our desires will change, which will thus bring a permanent change in our behaviour. Repentance is something that I am constantly learning more and more about, and I am so grateful for the opporutinity that we have to repent!

On a less serious note, I hope that you all have a great week until Christmas!